tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50100641884730558142019-02-17T04:46:31.887-08:00Law and DevelopmentTom Ginsburghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03896135211673097786noreply@blogger.comBlogger149125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-14427864284179668302016-11-20T02:31:00.002-08:002016-11-20T05:22:51.378-08:00Update -- new blog on 'regulatory geography'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Many of my previous posts on this blog have made reference to how dynamics of geography might effect law and development.&nbsp; Along these lines, my own research focuses more on the regulatory effects of geography (what I call regulatory geography) than on law and development per se, which has made it difficult for me to develop a more sustained presence on this blog.&nbsp; But for those who might be interested, I have started my own blog on regulatory geography, in which I hope that, since it aligns more closely with my present research and teaching agenda, I will be more active.&nbsp; For those interested, the blog address is <a href="http://regulatorygeography.blogspot.sg/">http://regulatorygeography.blogspot.sg/.</a><br /><br />Mike </div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-57769059683312031092015-06-15T19:37:00.001-07:002015-06-16T10:23:42.845-07:00On pianos, trees and development<br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An apologies to our readers for my absence during this semester. Family matters have kept me away from most of my professional commitments. But I am back, and happy to see that Michael Dowdle's has done a good job at keeping the blog alive!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a beautiful autobiographic post on <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/law-development-and-music-belated.html">Law, Development and Music</a>, Michael draws on a very personal experience to ask why, "in law and development, when looking at 'the Global South', we focus far more on what nations are not doing then on what they are doing." While Glenn Gould's piano led Michael to this question, Mahatma Ghandi's beautiful tree has led James Tooley to the same question.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a mission to investigate the failures of educational systems in developing countries, Tooley accidentally bumped into private schools for the poor. These were often located in slums or poor neighborhoods; run by people who belonged to the community; and despite the fact that they charged fees, there were financial schemes to assure that the kids from the poorest families as well as those who were slightly better off were able to have access to education.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tooley finds these private schools in India, Nigeria, Ghana and China, as he report in his book entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Tree-Personal-Educating-Themselves/dp/1933995920">The Beautiful Tree</a>: A Personal Journey into How the World's Poorest People are Education Themselves. The title, as the reader comes to find at the very end of the book (p. 220), comes from a speech: "When Ghandi spoke at the Royal Institute for Royal Affairs in London on October 20, 1931, (...) he said the British came to India and uprooted 'the <i>beautiful tree', </i>he was referring to the beautiful tree of a private education system serving the poor as well as the rich. Instead of embracing this indigenous private education system, the British rooted it out, and it perished. And this left India more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The finding that there are private schools by the poor to the poor is interesting in and of itself, but Tooley's book gets even more fascinating. Tooley conducted standardized performance tests to compare the performance of the students in these private schools with those attending the public school system (which is the focus of many educational policies for development). In all countries except for China, students attending these low-fee private schools were getting a better education than their counterparts in the public system.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Chinese exception is explained in <a href="http://www.enterprise-development.org/page/the-beautiful-tree">this nice summary </a>of the book: "</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The logic seems to be somewhat different in China, where private schools are closer in performance to Government schools, but cater mainly for children in remote rural villages; parents are reluctant to send their children (especially their daughters) to distant Government schools. Their rationale is therefore slightly different to that in Africa and India – where the existence of private schools seems to be at least partly a function of perceived shortcomings in Government provision." (Click <a href="http://www.enterprise-development.org/page/the-beautiful-tree">here</a> for the full summary).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While Brazil (or any other Latin American country) is not featured in the book, last Friday I had a chance to visit <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocinha">Rocinha</a>, the largest slums in Brazil. This sprawling favela with an estimated population of 100,000 people today has nothing less but three private schools. As far as I could assess, the schools follow the same model described by Tooley: low fees, organized by the poor and serving the poor.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the weekend, I had a chance to talk to a law professor who is actively involved in the Association of the Residents of Favelas in Rio, and I asked her about the schools. She said that they were a common phenomenon. I asked if they were providing higher quality education than Brazil's public schools. Her answer was negative. She said that Brazil's public schools had very well trained teachers who could provide a much better education to the kids. The problem that private schools were solving is that they were dependable, unlike public schools, where there are recurrent strikes that can last for months, unforeseen closures, and all sorts of problems with transportation to get kids to and from schools. For working parents, specially single mothers, it was hard to find last minute alternative solutions to these problems. So, private schools were a tradeoff: kids get a worse education, but parents do not have any uncertainty about whether they will have a place to leave their kids or not. If this account is correct, the logic for these schools in Brazil would be very different from the logic in China (and probably the results about performance would also be inferior).&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In any event, this book (and the understudied phenomenon of private schools in Brazilian favelas) seems to suggest that we have much to learn about&nbsp; </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">creative and interesting solutions adopted by </span>developing countries and specially how the poor people are managing to help themselves without counting or foreign aid or their national or local governments. Tooley showed that instead of looking at the education that poor kids were not receiving (public education) we should look at the education they were manage to guarantee for themselves. Following Michael Dowdle's call and Tooley's example, I think we should start looking into other instances of the same phenomenon. I am sure we will be surprised with what we will find. </span><br />Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-37174809453132918552015-05-05T20:34:00.001-07:002015-05-20T21:59:20.776-07:00M. Sornarajah's Resistance and Change in the International Law on Foreign Investment -- and its relevance to law and development (and New Development Economics in particular)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">My colleague here in Singapore, <a href="https://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/faculty/staff/profileview.asp?UserID=lawsorna" target="_blank">M. Sornarajah</a> has a new book just published by Cambridge University Press entitled <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/sg/academic/subjects/law/private-law/resistance-and-change-international-law-foreign-investment?format=HB" target="_blank">Resistance and Change in the International Law on Foreign Investment</a>.&nbsp; The book has (surprising?) relevance to law and development.&nbsp; In a nutshell, what Sornarajah presents is an intellectual history of the development of international investment arbitration as both a distinct profession and distinct academic discipline.&nbsp; What makes this relevant to law and development is that for the most part, the same intellectual forces that propelled the emergence of international investment arbitration as a distinct field of law also propelled the <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/77578/excerpt/9780521677578_excerpt.pdf" target="_blank">second emergence of law and development as legal discipline</a>.&nbsp; One can see many parallels between the intellectual dynamics described by Sornarajah and those that have shaped law and development.<br /><br />But . . . Sornarajah's book is a sobering read.&nbsp; His is not a story where they end up living happily ever after.&nbsp; It's more a story where they end up escaping into the wilderness pursued by large dogs.&nbsp; And as some of you could probably guess, I think it thereby ultimately provides a much needed <i>cautionary </i>tale about law and development.&nbsp; <br /><br />Simply put, Sornarajah's story is ultimately one of the emergence, transcendence of, and of emerging resistance to, what we might call the 'global neo-liberal order'.&nbsp; The present-day regime of international investment arbitration is very much a product and reflection of this order.&nbsp; And, as well displayed by Sornarajah, it is not a pleasant sight, particularly for the countries of the global south (and also increasingly for developed countries as well).&nbsp; The neo-liberal pursuit of the 'perfect' market -- a market that is said to only exist outside the reach of regulatory intervention -- has caused or at least allowed international investment law to transcend domestic law.&nbsp; National efforts to regulate national economies, for example efforts to inhibit tobacco sales, are now being classified as 'takings' requiring compensation because they interfere with ideal market dynamics (or more precisely, investor expectations of ideal market dynamic). <br /><br />Of course, all this is well observed in the area of law and development as well.&nbsp; The intellectual symbiosis between neo-liberalism and law and development IFIs is well rehearsed.&nbsp; But that is not what I found most striking in Sornarajah's account.&nbsp; In fact, what I found most sobering is a particular interpretation one could give his story -- one, ironically, that I think he may well disagree with.<br /><br />Sornarajah's story is one that he sees as being driven by human intentionality.&nbsp; Neo-liberalism, by his account, is in the context of international investment arbitration seems very much a strategy and product of the investor class (and associated professionals).&nbsp; But my own suspicion is that in fact, neo-liberalism is a spontaneous phenomenon -- one whose drive is not fueled by human intentionality or class / professional / economic interests but by dynamics that operate outside the reach of such intentionality.&nbsp; And if this is the case, it is a much more troublesome beast than even Sornarajah would suggest.<br /><br />My suspicion along these lines comes from a particular aspect of his story.&nbsp; As portrayed by Sornarajah, neo-liberalism has a chameleon-like quality to it.&nbsp; It changes its intellectual shape in response to intellectual challenge:&nbsp; it starts out being simply about economic fairness; then it morphs into a trope about economic development; then it morphs again into a trope about the natural order of the economic universe.&nbsp; In <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/competition-law/asian-capitalism-and-regulation-competition-towards-regulatory-geography-global-competition-law" target="_blank">a book I recently co-edited about the globalization of competition regulation</a>, one of the <a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781139226349&amp;cid=CBO9781139226349A017&amp;tabName=Chapter" target="_blank">chapters</a> -- by Ngai-Ling Sum of Lancaster University -- articulated a very similar story in the context of competition law.<br /><br />I think we can also detect this evolution in the context of law and development.&nbsp; But the thing about competition law and law and development (particularly competition regulation) is that in contrast to investment arbitration, they are not driven by the interests of international investors.&nbsp; The interests that drive them are very different.&nbsp; And yet, they have very similar intellectual trajectories.&nbsp; This suggests to me a spontaneous rather than a designed order.<br /><br />In <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate" target="_blank">The Blank Slate</a></i>, Steven Pinker tells a story about an experiment that was undertaken using people with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain" target="_blank">split-brain syndrome</a>.&nbsp; Split-brain syndrome is a condition in which the two hemispheres of the brain are not able to communication with one another.&nbsp; What the experiment did was introduce stimulus to the left hemisphere, which provoked some response from the subject.&nbsp; The subject was then asked to explain why she did what she just did.&nbsp; Verbal explanation is a right-hemisphere activity, and because of the split-brain condition, the right-hemisphere could not actually know / perceive what the subject's action was actually in response to.&nbsp; Nevertheless, the subjects, when asked, always provided an explanation.&nbsp; The explanation was completely unconnected with the actual reality, but the subjects nevertheless honestly believed it.<br /><br />So, here's my hypothesis.&nbsp; Neo-liberalism is not a phenomenon, much less a project or a strategy.&nbsp; It is simply an explanation we give for a phenomenon that operates outside our intentionality, but which we nevertheless want to believe we have capacity to control.<br /><br />I think this is very relevant to law and development because much of law and development, at least for the present, projects itself as an effort to harness or control or resist neo-liberal economic dynamics.&nbsp; I am thinking specifically here of <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/drodrik/Research%20papers/The%20New%20Development%20Economics.pdf" target="_blank">New Development Economics</a> (or 'experimentalism').&nbsp; NDE sells itself as a means for escaping the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated developmentalism for the past 25 year or so.&nbsp; But if I'm right, then NDE will not give us such escape, it will simply end up reproducing neo-liberalism under some new intellectual guise.<br /><br />And it may be even worse than that (assuming you, like Sornarajah and myself, think the 'neo-liberal global order' has its problems), because experimentalism seems to be like a distinctly un-self-aware developmental agenda (see also <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.sg/2014/11/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-beijing.html" target="_blank">here</a>; for Mariana Prado's disagreement with this claim, see <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.sg/2014/11/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-beijing_16.html" target="_blank">here</a>) .&nbsp; By wrapping itself up in the language and metaphors of the natural sciences -- namely, the 'experimental method', NDE would seem to be particularly prone to naturalize its developmental effects, and thus to remove them from the reach of normative-critical inquiry.&nbsp; At least the Washington Consensus was up front about what it claimed to to.&nbsp; At least, it presented its particular vision of neo-liberalism in the form of a disprovable hypothesis.&nbsp; Experimentalism, as a methodology, by contrast cannot be disproved (even while particular experiments can).&nbsp; And if I'm right about the actual dynamics of neo-liberalism, NDE may thereby end up pushing neo-liberalism even farther outside the reach of human intentionality.</div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-27661825785713761512015-04-10T20:06:00.001-07:002015-06-17T19:27:42.904-07:00Law, Development, and Music: a belated, overblown and far too self-absorbed tribute to Glenn Gound -- but an honest tribute non-the-less.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A long time ago, in order to prepare for becoming a failed legal academic, I first becoming a failed musician.&nbsp; A composer, actually:&nbsp; I made it into the doctoral program in music composition at Columbia University.*&nbsp; But that was as far as I could go.&nbsp; Sometime during that time, I simply stopped being able to do whatever it was I was trying to do.&nbsp; It is something that consumes me to this day.&nbsp; What happened? <br /><br />My problem was 'form'.&nbsp; I simply could not generate pieces of any significant length.&nbsp; Ten minutes max.&nbsp; In part, this was because I couldn't hear form.&nbsp; The formal structure of music always eluded my ears, even if I could appreciate it in the abstract (on the page, as it were).&nbsp; <br /><br />When you study music -- what is called 'music theory' -- you study form.&nbsp; In the canonical music of the 18th and 19th centuries, there are two dimensions to form.&nbsp; The micro dimension is a vertical structure known as chords.&nbsp; Traditionally, music phrasing was constructed out of a particular chordal progression that would typically be represented by I ... V-I (the tonic chord (I), leading to the dominant chord (V), resolving immediately back to the tonic).&nbsp; The macro dimension is key: a particular relationship among notes that is structure around a particular note that serves as the tonic.&nbsp; Again, here, the archetypical relationship is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis" target="_blank">I-V-I</a>, in which the first theme is expressed in a particular tonic (say, 'C' major), a second theme is expressed in the 'dominant' ('G' major), with the music returning back to the tonic in a re-expression of the first theme: an archetypical form known as the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_form" target="_blank">sonata-allegro form</a>'.<br /><br />My problem was that even as regards to the most orthodox compositions, I simply could not hear chords or keys.&nbsp; I couldn't hear the transition from tonic to dominant in the sonata-allegro form.&nbsp; I couldn't hear the chord structures playing out in the progression from tonic (I) to V-I.&nbsp; Because of the former in particular, I could not hear 'length' -- which means that I could not write pieces of significant length.&nbsp; This is what ultimately made me into a 'failed musician'.<br /><br />That was many years ago.&nbsp; I have not put note to stave for a quarter century, although I think about it often.&nbsp; And as alluded to above, even after all these years, it still bothers me:&nbsp; why could I not write music of significant length?<br /><br />When I was studying music in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a general buzz about a particular, eccentric pianist named Glenn Gould.&nbsp; I wasn't a pianist, and Gould was generally known for his eccentric interpretations of non-modern classics -- Bach in particular (although, as it turns out, he was also very fond of the music of Arnold Schoenberg).&nbsp; As a composer, I listened generally to music written in the 20th century.&nbsp; So I never listened to him.<br /><br />And since then, I haven't really listened to much any music&nbsp; -- it reminds me of dreams that long ago escaped my my grasp.&nbsp; But by dint of fortuity, this morning I began watching a you-tube video of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AirAT7gN6A0" target="_blank">Gould playing -- and more importantly discussing -- the fugues of J.S. Bach</a>.&nbsp; And two things happened: a quarter century too late, I finally heard Bach for the first time; and a quarter century too late, I finally learned, well into my later autumn, why I failed in my earlier spring.<br /><br />Like his playing, Gould's analysis of Bach's work was like nothing I ever heard.&nbsp; It had almost nothing to do with the analytic frameworks I had learned and pursued in Conservatory.&nbsp; There was no mapping of I ... V-I.&nbsp; There was no mapping of&nbsp; the key structures of the 'exposition'.&nbsp; Rather, Gould describes how both key and chord in Bach's fugues emerged naturally out of the melody.&nbsp; Sometimes that structure followed I ... V-I.&nbsp; But often, perhaps more often, it did not.&nbsp; Bach appears to have been particular fascinated exploring keys built on the the III and the VI -- the mediant and sub-mediant.&nbsp; I have a theory for why, but the important part is that Bach's structure is not meaningfully captured using the conceptualization of music theory that I was taught as an undergraduate.&nbsp; In Bach, key and chord where products of the melody, not designs for the composition.&nbsp; It is the line, not the form, that is the crucial determinant of length.<br /><br />And then, something amazing happened.&nbsp; As Gould was playing some of Bach's fugues, I started to 'hear' the keys.&nbsp; And they are very different from what I had always imagined them as being.&nbsp; They are fleeting, ever changing -- a kaleidoscopic mosaic rather than the architectural edifice I had always been looking for but could never perceive.&nbsp; (I still don't hear them as well in the Preludes, but interestingly, Gould himself was not particularly interested in the Preludes.)<br /><br />Like Bach, my compositional forte and emphasis was counterpoint.&nbsp; What I 'heard' when I heard music was (and still is) principally the interplay of voices.&nbsp; But being concerned with form and length as I was taught it, and being a product of the intellectual traditions of my time, I was always thinking in terms of large scale structures of key and chord independent of voice.&nbsp; And like me, Bach's focus was also on counterpoint.&nbsp; Unlike me, he was not particularly concerned with concerned with large-scale structures of key and chord.&nbsp; His keys and chords and length were determined, not by formal dictate, but simply by the melody and its contrapuntal unfolding.&nbsp; And -- why didn't I see this before? -- like me, his works tended to be between 5 and 7 minutes in length: but unlike me, he did not care.&nbsp; <br /><br />Looking back over an ocean of years, I seem to remember that that's how my work also tended to proceed.&nbsp; It was the line that drove me, even while it was the form that obsessed me.&nbsp; Far too late, Glenn Gould taught me want it was I needed to know those many years ago; he gave me the answer I'd been wondering about ever since: in fact, I was doing it right all along.&nbsp; The reason I became a failed musician is because at the end of the day, I was too concerned with what I was not doing and not concerned enough with what it was I was doing. <br /><br />And this brings me to 'law and development'.&nbsp; <br /><br />In law and development, when looking at 'the Global South', we focus far more on what nations are not doing then on what they are doing.&nbsp; Like music theory, law and development see law as a form, as an expression of particular collection of keys and chords that make up that particular compositional structure we call 'rule of law'.&nbsp; And when we don't see those keys and chords, we obsess about it: where is the dominant? why has India become trapped in the sub-mediant?<br /><br />But I wonder what law and development would look like if we saw each legal system, even those of the 'lesser-developed' world, as articulating their own form, their own chord and key, out of the particular melodies they have inherited or invented?&nbsp; Some doing it better than others, obviously, and all make many mistakes along the way (one of the other really interesting things about Gould's analysis is that he did not valorize Bach, his Bach was a human who often made mistakes or became distracted by his own compositional obsessions--just like our own legal systems even as they are articulated by the developed world).&nbsp; I think of Indonesia -- a legal system that from the perspective of chord and key seems dysfunctional beyond measure, but operating in a society that nevertheless seem to show its own distinctive and extremely fascinating -- compelling -- legal and constitutional 'aesthetic' -- an aesthetic that somehow 'works in the sense that Indonesian society seems generally functional both sociologically and economically.&nbsp; Law and development likes to focus on what it is that the Indonesian legal system does not.&nbsp; And become understandably frustrated by it.&nbsp; But while there is definitely value in doing so, at the same time, we might also occasionally focus on what that system does (somehow) do -- and be amazed by it.&nbsp; There is need for both perspectives.&nbsp; And after finally having 'met' Glenn Gould, I for the moment at least find myself feeling very much drawn to the latter.<br /><br />*&nbsp; My mentor was the great <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Davidovsky" target="_blank">Mario Davidovsky</a>, who -- ironically -- studied law before deciding to go into music. </div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-74782329825267895032015-01-22T00:53:00.002-08:002015-01-22T00:54:03.084-08:00Dowdle's post-mortum on our Dialogus <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Writing as myself rather than as 'Pessimo', I generally agree with Mariana / Optimo's concluding assessment. I think at the end of the day, we just disagreed about what is necessary to constitute a 'model'.&nbsp; I think I am much more demanding on this regard.&nbsp; This came out most clearly, to me, in our discussion of Peerenboom's 'East Asian Model' and experimentalism.&nbsp; In both cases, Mariana / Optimo seemed to locate the purported model in the discourse that experimentalism could be used to provoke.&nbsp; I don't regard discourse as a 'model' -- although I recognize it as very useful.&nbsp; This may well be simply a definitional disagreement, one that has no real bearing on substance.<br /><br />Along these lines, I had 'Pesimo' take a more hard-line position on experimentalism than I would take personally.&nbsp; In real life, I am sympathetic-but-somewhat-skeptical of experimentalism.&nbsp; I think there is something viable to experimentalism, and have even written a couple of articles using Sabel's model to look at public law evolutionary processes in the People's Republic of China (in the process, identifying a spontaneous experimentalist dynamic that I called "<a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/nyuilp35&amp;div=8&amp;id=&amp;page=" target="_blank">discursive benchmarking</a>").&nbsp; My principal problem&nbsp; with both Sabel and Rodrik is that I think they, like many in the American 'law and development' and 'law and economics' communities, are (far) too optimistic about the applicability of their model.&nbsp; They're writings read more like sales-pitches than like objective academic analysis.&nbsp; Their supporting case studies analyses are often much more rosy than the cases themselves actually turn out to be.&nbsp; This is certainly the case with Rodrik's presentation of 'experimentalism' in China. <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Even Sebastian Heilmann's "<a href="http://www.strongwindpress.com/pdfs/tuijian/Sebastian%20Heilmann_Policy%20Experimentation%20in%20China%27s%20Economic%20Rise_2008.pdf" target="_blank">Policy Experimentation in China's Economic Rise</a>", the principle case-study support for Rodrik, made clear that China has hereto </span></span>been unable to institutionalized its so-called 'experimentation', although it has tried.&nbsp; I think there is a utility to experimentalism, but I think that utility is quite limited, and it is certainly not the magic bullet portrayed by Rodrik and earlier by Sabel.<br /><br />Once we get beyond our definitional disagreements, thought I think we did ultimately find very common ground in the idea of development as a kind of discourse.&nbsp; Again, Mariana would appear to say that this particular kind of discourse constitutes a particular kind of model, I would disagree on definitional grounds, but that really isn't that important, at least for now.&nbsp; Interestingly, we found unexpected support for this point in Jed Kroncke's contribution to that same conference, which characterized the meaning and value of the 'Beijing Consensus' precisely in the kind of developmental discourse that 'consensus' generated in Brazil.&nbsp; My take on the developmental discourse the Beijing Consensus has generated is different from Jed's, and is different from Mariana's.&nbsp; But not completely incompatible.&nbsp; All in all, I left the Dialogus feeling much that the idea of development as discourse makes my much more optimistic about the possibilities of "law and development" than the more orthodox conceptualizations of development as 'model' for institutional reform.</div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-67898723392607752562015-01-12T02:52:00.000-08:002015-01-12T03:09:41.132-08:00Replacing the Search for a Beijing Consensus with a Toronto-Singapore-São Paulo Dialogue<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph {mso-style-priority:34; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; margin-top:0in; 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mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level5 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level6 {mso-level-number-format:roman-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:right; text-indent:-9.0pt;} @list l0:level7 {mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level8 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level9 {mso-level-number-format:roman-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:right; text-indent:-9.0pt;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have learned a lot with this dialogue and was happily surprised to find out that Pessimo and I actually had a number of points of agreement, contrary to what we assumed when we started this exercise. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>We may have numerous disagreements about strategies to enhance efficiency on capturing wealth and thus generating economic growth. However, if we move beyond economic concepts of development (such as the GDP per capita indexes used by the World Bank) Pessimo's determinism seems to fade away and we are on common ground. While this is not of much utility here, as the Beijing Consensus seems to be primarily focused on economic growth, this may be a topic to be fruitfully explored in a future dialogue.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>The discussion about Ramo’s three theorems helped us define the terms of our debate. On the substance of the debate, we agree that a Beijing consensus does not need to show that China has done things right or has already succeeded. So, a discussion about the consensus should not be based on empirical disputes about what has happened in China. The question that we need to focus in whether the proposals inspired by China can serve as a model for other countries.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>The discussion about Ramo also helped us refine and agree on what do we mean by a “model for development”. We are both looking for sustainable and feasible guidance for action, with internal coherence, and grounded on some form of credible knowledge (theoretical or empirical). The only difference is that I may be more open to accept negative guidance (“do not follow the Washington Consensus”), while Pessimo seems to be looking for more concrete proposals.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>On the East Asian Model proposed by Randall Peremboom, the terms of the debate as stated earlier did not reveal much of a consensus. We debated the meaning of the term “gradualism” and simply disagreed on what it meant and whether the gradualism implemented by Asian countries could serve as a model for the rest of the world. I am more optimistic about seeing at least the semblance of a model in the ideas of sequencing and gradualism than Pessimo does partially because I am focusing on these two ideas as meta-principles. While Pessimo seems too attached to the idea that gradualism has only been used by centralized economies to transition to market systems, I am wondering if – acknowledging that – we can still transport the strategy to other contexts. Thus, the reason of my optimism is largely connected with the idea of meta-principles, which Pessimo did not seem to disagree with, at least in principle. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>Still regarding the East Asian model, there was one point of agreement that did not come across explicitly in our exchange. Pessimo response to Optimo indicated that he did not disagree with the normative argument presented by Amartya Sen, but he worried that neither Sen nor the supposed East Asian model offered strategies on how to promote political liberalization. Indeed, Pessimo indicated that without a concrete strategy, there was very little utility in such normative statement. This is certainly a point in which we agree.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6)<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span>Then we turned to the third and last part of our debate: experimentalism. Here, I do not think that we have any point of agreement. At the same time, this seems to be the most elaborated and cited version of the idea of Beijing Consensus in the literature. Thus, it is worth flashing out our disagreement. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pessimo has challenged the possibility of using experimentation as a model given the fact that it does not help us define what are the ends of development. This connects with Pessimo’s earlier claim (regarding the East Asian Model) that muddling through is what capitalist countries have been doing all along. It also connects with Pessimo’s conclusion indicating that muddling through is not a model, as we do not have a system to define the ends and therefore to assess successes. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I do not agree. I have proposed that a thin conception of experimentation could bracket that question while providing guidance for action. Perhaps what I called a “thin” conception of experimentation can be illustrated by what <a href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/147.pdf">Cass Sustein calls “incompletely theorized agreements”</a>. Actors do not need to agree on the ends in order to collaborate on the implementation of means, as long as these means are conducive to the different ends pursued by these actors. This seems to be perfectly feasible in the development field. As I stated at the beginning of the debate, development goals are not as antithetical to each other as we like to portray them. Indeed, promoting economic growth versus enhancing capabilities or eliminating abject poverty are often intertwined processes. Sometimes they are so entangled that it is not only hard to separate them analytically or empirically, but it may not be very productive to do so.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In sum, in the process of mapping points of disagreement, Optimo and Pessimo have surprisingly found a lot of common ground and arrived at a very promising starting point for something constructive. Indeed, if I were to extract any lessons from this academic exercise, this exchange illustrates that “Replacing the Search for Consensus with Open Dialogue” may be a far more productive strategy in the development field than the ones adopted so far.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I hope this blog will continue to serve as a space for this and other conversations to continue. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-47834428270653843552014-12-28T00:07:00.000-08:002014-12-29T05:31:21.340-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus, Pessimo's Summation and Conclusion: 'Whither Beijing Consensus' -- not where you might think!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The Beijing Consensus, including its various derivatives, is not a model, it is a narrative.&nbsp; Moreover, as a narrative, it is for the most part not particularly about China, nor is it particularly about development.&nbsp; Rather, it is -- paradoxically -- a story that is primarily about the United States, and about America's place in human evolutionary history.&nbsp; But this is not necessarily a bad thing.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />In order to understand how this is so, we have to look a bit more closely about the intellectual history of 'development'. &nbsp; As is well known, the modern law and development movement first emerged in the 1950s as a product of the Cold War.&nbsp; The idea of development fit quite neatly into the American way of promoting itself vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.&nbsp; The story was that economic development -- i.e., the development of standards of living and capacities to project political power characteristic of the advanced industrial democracies of the North Atlantic, and particular of the United States -- was the product of a liberal-democratic constitutional order interacting with a <span class="st" data-hveid="66">laissez-faire </span>capitalist economic order.&nbsp; Since both liberal democratic constitutionalism and <span class="st" data-hveid="66">laissez-faire </span>capitalism were distinctly American attributes, 'development' itself came to be seen by many as proof of the practical and moral superiority of American-ness.<br /><br />The emotional triumph of the American linkage of development, neo-Madisonian constitutionalism, and laissez-faire capitalism was, of course, the fall of the Berlin Wall.&nbsp; This was, in the famous terminology of Frances Fukayama, proof that human's had finally reached the 'end of history' -- objective proof of the fact that the 'American'[1] linkage of liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism was indeed the only real path to human thriving, and perhaps by extension, proof that the United States' status as the World's&nbsp; political, economic and ideological hegemon was in fact the morally deserved.&nbsp; From a developmental perspective, this linkage came to be embodied what become known as the Washington Consensus, a developmental model that -- consistent with American triumphalism -- saw laissez-faire capitalism as silver bullet for economic development. <br /><br />Of course, either the United States, nor the West, have ever been completely unified behind the American vision.&nbsp; There have always been significant pockets of intellectual resistance to and dissent from the othodox American economic ideology, not simply as an international agenda, but particularly with the coming of Reagen-Thatcher 'revolution' as a domestic agenda.&nbsp; Prior to the 1989, such dissent -- what we might call 'economic humanism' -- relied primarily on various versions of Marxism -- generally utopian Marxism in the United States (see, e.g., the Critical Legal Studies movement); structural Marxism in the case of Europe.&nbsp; But to many in the West, and especially in the United States, the fall of the Berlin Wall was interpreted as a conclusive proof that Marxism, in all its variants, was simply wrong.&nbsp; With this, the conceptual / and ideological foundation of economic humanism crumbled, particularly in the United States.&nbsp; Critics had to search for a different narrative on which to frame their critique.<br /><br />Despite all this, post-Cold-War American triumphalism was short lived.&nbsp; Most particularly for our story here was the problem of China.&nbsp; Even after 1989, China appeared to remain stubbornly non-liberal, both economically and politically, but also appeared to be experiencing significant developmental success.&nbsp; Through 1997, the American / Western developmental orthodoxy was able to ignore the conceptual threat of China because of evolutionary ambiguities in the Chinese political-economic system.&nbsp; Sure, the Chinese remained largely non-liberal both politically and economically, but at the same time, if you squinted just right, they could nevertheless be seen as possibly moving, again both economically and politically, in a liberal direction.<br /><br />The first real challenge to Washington-Consensus triumphalism came from the Asian Financial Crisis ca. 1997-2000.&nbsp; Efforts by IFI's and the American government to craft / impose a Washington consensus solution to that crisis not only resulted in failure, but in many cases they appeared to exasperate the social effects of that crisis.&nbsp; This gave economic humanists a new conceptual peg on which to hang their critique. The on-going American (and European) battle between <span class="st" data-hveid="66">laissez-</span>faire capitalists and economic humanism -- a battle that dates back at least to the 1880s in the United States (see, e.g., the 1896 presidential campaign between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan) -- now shifted to a new front, that of East-Southeast Asia ('ESE Asia').&nbsp; And insofar as that larger front was concerned, China would quickly come to represented ground-zero.<br /><br />The East Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) introduced two subtle but extremely catalytic changes in to Euro-American conceptualizations of the global economic order.&nbsp; First, the fact that that crisis was largely localized to East and Southeast Asia catalyzed the identification with the countries of ESE Asia of a distinct and structurally and conceptually coherent capitalist structuring, what is often today referred to as 'Asian capitalism'.&nbsp; (Such an identification can be traced back at least to the 'developmental state' literature of 1980s, but the AFC greatly popularized it.)&nbsp; That 'Asian capitalism' represented a distinct form of capitalism helped explain why the Asian Economic Crisis was largely localized to ESE Asia.&nbsp; That Asian capitalism represented a structurally coherent form of capitalism helped explain why that crisis impacted equally an otherwise wide diversity of politically autonomous national systems (from seemingly industrial democracies like South Korea to seemingly autocratic kleptocracies like Indonesia).<br /><br />As a territory within the ESE region, China was naturally included in this new, Asian-capitalist narrative.&nbsp; This, in turn, highlighted its 'otherness' -- the degree to which it now appeared to stand as contradiction of (rather than as support for) American triumphalism.&nbsp; This otherness was further heightened by the fact that not only had China largely escaped the social and economic disruptions of the ARC, but it had -- along with Japan -- sought to provide an alternative form of transnational economic response to that crisis, one that deviated significantly from the Washington Consensus based response offered by the international IFIs,&nbsp; but was prevented from doing so by political pressure from the United States.<br /><br />All this made China a very attractive peg on which economic humanists and others could begin to re-frame their ideological objections to American triumphalism.&nbsp; This was clearly why Joshua Ramo choose to name his humanist alternative to the Washington Consensus the 'Beijing Consensus', despite the fact that it had almost nothing to do with anything that China had actually done, intentionally or unintentionally, in the context of its own post-1980 economic and social evolution.&nbsp; And the appeal of China-centric adjectives like 'Beijing' and 'Chinese' extended beyond the realm of economic humanism.&nbsp; The American Cold-War linkage of the economic with the political with the developmental made China-centric adjectives useful in a wide diversity of Western ideological contestations -- not simply economic, but political and cultural as well.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />This helps explain why the 'Beijing Consensus' is a least in part a story about the America.&nbsp; But couldn't it also at the same time still also be a story about China's actual development? and through that a model for development more generally?<br /><br />Likely not.&nbsp; For a number of reasons.<br /><br />First, I think it highly questionable whether China actually presents us with a show-case example of 'development'. &nbsp; As least some portion of China's development has been a product of an earlier economic insanity that needlessly devastated China's productive capacity for over two decades.&nbsp; Much of China's subsequent growth was simply a product of China opening it markets, much like the rest of the world had already done some 200 years earlier.&nbsp; In other words, China's dramatic economic growth may well be the product of China simply no longer being stupid and not of China being particularly smart.&nbsp; Is simply not being stupid really that meaningful a developmental model?&nbsp; Beyond this, Green GDP measures suggest that China's unprecedented environmental degradation is now actually destroyed as much wealth as China's GDP growth is producing.&nbsp;&nbsp; In other words, China's may have effectively stopped growing altogether once one accounts for environmental degradation.&nbsp; Related to this, China significantly underperforms its income class in terms of iHDI, environmental sustainability, and subjective well being -- suggesting that even if China is 'growing' economically, it may not be growing into a country in which most people would actually want to live.&nbsp; All of this gives very good reason to question where China's particular pathway to economic 'growth' is really something we want to other countries replicate.&nbsp; <br /><br />Second, implicit in the story above is the observation that what adjectives like Chinese, Beijing and Asian are really doing is appealing to a particular quality of otherness.&nbsp; They are negative rather than positive definitions -- their principal purpose is to signify what something is not -- that it is not supportive of American triumphalism -- rather than what it is.&nbsp; But a model, on the other hand, is not about what something it not, it is about what something actually is.&nbsp; And for this reason, a negative definition can never serve as a meaningful 'model'<br /><br />We see this most clearly in the legal-developmental 'models' of experimentalism (aka New Development Economics') and the East Asian model.&nbsp; Experimentalism might represent an affirmative model when we structure it as a controlled experiment, but without control, and Rodrik makes clear that 'control' is not a necessary or even feasible component of the experimentalism of New Development Economics, experimentalism becomes nothing more than simply 'muddling through'.&nbsp; But 'muddling through' clearly does not describe anything that could meaningfully be called a model, rather it expressly denotes the affirmative absence of a model.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; <br /><br />What really prevents some vision of a Beijing Consensus from developing into an affirmative model for development is that at the end of the day, our understanding of development itself is founded upon a series of conceptual categories and distinctions that ultimately emerged to express particular moral-ideological understandings of the Cold War binary.&nbsp; They simply do not translate into post-Cold War understandings of the human condition.<br /><br />One the other hand, the last 70 years of human economic history has made increasingly clear that we really still have no hard evidence as to what triggers actually 'development'.&nbsp; Of course, we have gained considerable knowledge about what doesn't promote or trigger development:&nbsp; we now know, for example, that Soviet style command economies are often not particularly good at promoting economic development; more recently, we have also found out that implementation of greater laissez-faire capitalism, a'la the Washington Consensus, also does not promote economic development, at least by itself.&nbsp; But if not socialism or laissez-faire capitalism per se, what does promote development?<br /><br />To observe that China's political economic system deviates from that promoted by American triumphalism ultimately only tells us what that system is not, not what it is.&nbsp; Along these lines, it tells us of what is not essential to promoting development, but is much less clear about what it is that does promote development.&nbsp; Is it sequencing?&nbsp; is it state capitalism?&nbsp; is it Confucianism?&nbsp; Is it all of these, or something different?&nbsp; Or is it those emergent elements of Western-American capitalism that we saw in China's post-Mao opening but which the discourse of 'Asian capitalism' has tended to invisiblize?&nbsp; How much of China's economic growth post 1980 is attributable to the fact that prior to 1980 China effectively obliterated industrial economic productivity through 25 years of disastrous economic policymaking, namely the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?&nbsp; (The World Bank, for example, has recently praised China for <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:RelyOnVML/> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">“lifting 500 million persons out of poverty” without acknowledging the role that China may have played in putting those people in poverty in the first place.)&nbsp; </span>We might also note even more radically along these lines that some argue, rather convincingly to my mind, that development is actually not primarily the product of institutional or capitalist design at all.&nbsp; China's development can be explained simply by reference to its particular location in transnational political-economic space (its proximity to Taiwan and Japan, and by its location in the Cold War political contestation between the US and the USSR).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Much of the problem in this regard is that the very categories we use to conceptualize our possible predicates for economic development are themselves the product of Cold-War mythologizing. The fact is that the American economy never functioned the way that what I have been calling 'the laissez-faire capitalism' model of the Cold War claimed it did.&nbsp; American capitalism is actually a highly variegated economic system that includes within it a wide diversity of capitalism each serving a distinct social purpose.&nbsp; And there is no evidence that the particular features that we during the Cold War chose for ideological reasons as signifying the essence of the American economy are actually what drove economic growth, or whether that growth might have been catalyzed to considerable extent by other structural elements that were invisibilized by this myth because they were less effective at politically and ideologically branding the American economic system in distinction from the Soviet economic system (such as state and local social public welfare systems, or the quasi-monopolies that Joseph Schumpeter termed 'core industries' and that tended to populate the pinnacle of the American economic order, or the state-capitalist linkages created by the linkage of private campaign finance and political lobbying).<br /><br />The same is true with regards to American framing of its political order.&nbsp; American liberalism -- rights, democracy, rule of law -- has always been much more conditional than our engagement with the transnational world would often lead one to believe.&nbsp; Human rights are frequently qualified and the will of the demos is frequently subordinated to more sectoral, modernist, or otherwise elite perspectives.&nbsp; 'Rule of law' does not structure American social, political or economic ordering to the degree that that transnational 'rule of law' discourse suggests.&nbsp; And at the same time, these liberal elements also enjoy at least some degree of qualified respect -- sometime highly qualified to be sure, but some degree of true respect nevertheless -- in most of the world's political orders, including that of China.&nbsp; The difference is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.<br /><br />Once we recognize how much distinctiveness of both the American liberal market economy and its liberal political ordering have been exaggerated, then we see how exceedingly difficult it becomes to identify any set of features of China's political-legal-social-economic system that are really that distinctive to that system.&nbsp; China's is not a liberal market economy to be sure, but at the same time it to some extent it has within it all the elements of a liberal system.&nbsp; And its deviations from the ideal of market liberalism can be mapped onto deviations that are also found even in the United States.&nbsp; The same is true of its political system, and of its social system.&nbsp; And without being able to actually identity and meaningfully <i>distinctive</i> features of China's system, we can't identify what is actually <i>distinctive</i> about some so-called Chinese 'model'.&nbsp; Clearly, it is different, but it is also to some extent the same.<br /><br />Beyond this, even our understanding of what constitutes -- or what indicates -- development is highly colored by Cold-War ideological concepts that are of questionable application to the real world.&nbsp; As noted above, the modern idea of development -- the idea that equates development with GDP or GNP growth -- is an invention of the Cold War:&nbsp; we equated development with GDP growth because GDP growth was something that the West in general, and the United States in particular, has historically been particularly good at.&nbsp; But there are a number of problems with this.&nbsp; First, GDP was originally developed to measure industrial productivity in a classically Fordist economy -- that of the United States during the Second World War.&nbsp; The farther one moves away from that kind of economy, the more problematic that particular measure -- or its derivatives, like GNI -- become.&nbsp; Lessor developed countries are also lessor industrialized, and even beyond that not particularly Fordist, and this causes significant portions of their economy to elude GDP / GNI capture.&nbsp; Sometimes, these portions represent pockets of considerable productivity, other times, they can represent pockets of considerable non-productivity.&nbsp; And since they are by definition invisible, we really can't know which are which.&nbsp; Further catalyzing this ambiguity is the fact that in developing countries, the economic figures used to construct GDP / GNI measures are invariably provided by governments whose legitimacy and even survival depend upon a positive GDP / GNI assessment of economic growth.<br /><br />But even beyond this, the actual relationship between GDP / GNI growth and a conception of development that is actually desirable from the point of view of the national populations experiencing it is also quite contentious in the post Cold War world.&nbsp; China in particular showed us that GDP development can at least in some circumstances be severed from what we regard as political development (such as political liberalization, political or economic equality, 'freedom' or 'capabilities'), and this has lead many to question whether economic growth by itself actually captures anything we would consider desirable, at least in the absence of some corresponding political development.&nbsp; But of course, as we explored above, our understanding of what actually constitutes 'political development' is invariably itself highly colored by our Cold War narratives as to what constituted the structural 'essence' of the late-industrial American political-legal system.&nbsp; It is by no means structurally comprehensive, and in some cases is structurally arbitrary.&nbsp; For this reason, our choice as to what constitutes a meaningful political-social structure that is indicative of 'development' is as conditioned on ideology as our choice as to what constitutes a meaningful economic structure.<br /><br />All in all, in discussing a possible Chinese model of development, not only are we unable to objectively identify any truly essential structural features of Chinese capitalism, we are also unable even to objectively identify whether China is actually experiencing and meaningful sense of 'development'.&nbsp;&nbsp; At least for the present, our choice of which particular economic and political-legal structures are meaningful within the context of development continue to be borne <i>primarily</i> out of American efforts to locate itself in the political world created of the Cold War, and through that in human history.&nbsp; For this reason, our stories about China's 'development' -- both positive and negative -- are ultimately not stories that are ultimately about China.&nbsp; They remain, for the present at least, stories about what China has to tell us about being American. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />And this is not at all a bad thing.&nbsp; As Baruch Spinoza so cogently identifies, knowing the world and knowing oneself are symbiotic endeavors.&nbsp; The more we can learn about who we really are, as distinguished from who we like to think we are, the more we are likely to truly understand and appreciate our place in the world, and through that the world as it actually is.&nbsp; Speaking now as an American, the problem with the Cold-War ideology along these lines is precisely that it represents a picture of ourselves as we wish we were, but not as we actually are.&nbsp; Seen in this light, endeavors to identify (and contest) a Beijing Consensus, even though they are really about America, are indeed nevertheless very much worth the effort.&nbsp; Because in telling us who we really are (as distinguished from who we wish we were), these effort ultimately help us appreciate how the world actually is (as distinguished from how we want it to be).&nbsp; This we have to do first, before we can knowingly identify any meaningful paths to 'development' -- however conceived -- through law.<br /><br />Wait . . . did Pessimo just end on a note of optimism? &nbsp; </div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-41899681891632019362014-12-26T19:55:00.001-08:002014-12-26T22:21:59.560-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus, part 3: Pessimo clarifications on the East Asian Model<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Some quick responses to Optimo regarding my position on the East Asian Model:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">First, one of my arguments against the East Asian Model involves its claim that law and development should focus on promoting economic reform before focusing on promoting political reform.&nbsp; I counters by arguing that a regime's political evolution simply probably lies beyond the reach of developmental programs.&nbsp; If the polity is not ready to reform, there's nothing law and development can do about it; and when it is ready to reform, no developmental officer is going to say "not yet, you're not finished with your economic development."&nbsp; So as a developmental model, sequencing is really a moot point.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Optimo interpreted my argument as being strongly normative -- as arguing that law and development <i>should </i>not engage in efforts to promote political development.&nbsp; In fact, I did not intend it to be a normative argument.&nbsp; I meant to advanced it as a simply empirical claim that law and development cannot control for (i.e., promote or retard) political evolution, as advanced by the East Asian Model.&nbsp; They can try, but they will fail.&nbsp; Not because they <i>should </i>fail, but simply because that is the way our social universe is put together.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">On the other hand, there may be reasons why law and development may sometimes normatively choose to promote political reform even if it knows it is going to fail.&nbsp; Where and if this is ever the case, my argument would be moot.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Note, along these lines, that Optimo writes:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">However, the normative challenge posed by Pessimo is hard to reconcile with the views of one of the most respected thinkers in the development world today, Amartya Sen. In his book <i>Development as Freedom</i>, Sen argues that democratic regimes are conducive to development in a multitude of ways that ultimately enhance human capabilities. One of the most interesting claims developed by Sen in this regard is the idea that democracies avert famines. </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">In fact, Sen poses no challenge at all to my argument as I see it.&nbsp; I will readily admit that democracy may well at least sometimes catalyze development (although I find his demonstration of how democracies prevent famine problematic).&nbsp; My point is that regardless of such catalytic effects, law and development cannot strategically promote democracy.&nbsp; I don't think Sen ever addresses how we in the real world might go about strategically promoting 'democratic' reforms of the kind that are likely to catalyze development. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">But in any event, even if he does, Sen actually supports my larger argument that the East Asian Model's particular use of sequencing does not provide a meaningful model for development.&nbsp; As noted, that model argues that economic reform should occur before political reform.&nbsp; Like me, Sen is actually arguing against such sequencing, albeit from a normative rather than from an empirical position): it's just that Sen is saying that we <i>should </i>not engage in this this kind of sequencing, while I am saying that we simply can not engage in sequencing, period.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Finally, Optimo defends the East Asian Model's advocacy of gradualism as simply an expression of the tried-and-true developmental formula that Charles Lindblom famously termed 'the science of muddling through.'&nbsp; In fact, I see the East Asian Model's notion of gradualism in a very different light.&nbsp; As advanced by the East Asian Model, gradualism is offered as an alternative to the rapid, big-bang approach that 'Western' advisers, most famously Jeffrey Sachs, pushed on the former Soviet bloc nations in the 1990s.&nbsp; In this sense, it is clear referring to a strategy for capitalist transformation -- for transiting from a command economy to a liberal market economy.&nbsp; As I note, there are very few developing countries left in the world that still operate a command economy, and for this reason gradualism is really a moot point insofar as a universalizable developmental model is concerned.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Along these lines, I would argue that 'the science of muddling through' is a different kettle of fish.&nbsp; To say that we are 'muddling through' is not to say that we are being gradualist, it is not to say that we need to avoid moving 'too fast' in promoting development.&nbsp; Again, my argument is that it simply makes no sense to say that Brazil or Thailand or Romania needs to adopt a gradualist approach to development -- 'gradualist' in what sense? What does 'gradualism' look like in the context of these countries?&nbsp; I would argue that it doesn't look like anything -- to say that Brazil should adopt a 'gradualist' approach to development is like saying that Optimo's son should adopt a 'gradualist' approach to high school.&nbsp; </span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">&nbsp; </span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">As per Lindbolm, I believe that muddling through has always been our approach to the to development of national economies that are already capitalist.&nbsp; Even as a positivist developmental strategy, there is nothing distinctly East Asian or Chinese about it.&nbsp; And again, as with experimentalism, it actually offers very little in the way of a developmental model.&nbsp; How do you model 'muddling through'?&nbsp; To muddle is to muddle.&nbsp; Is Brazil not developing because it is not muddling enough?&nbsp; Or is it just not muddling the right way?&nbsp; What distinguishes good muddling from not so good muddling?&nbsp; It can't be failure, because frequent failure is the distinguishing feature of muddling.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Finally, as it turns out, the fat guy on my roof was not Santa.&nbsp; It was my next door neighbor.&nbsp; She thought getting some horses on my roof this time of year would be a pretty neat practical joke.&nbsp; She was right.&nbsp; And after she came to after being hit by a baseball bat, we shared some eggnog and discussed Judith Butler.&nbsp; So while it is indeed sad that Pessimo is innately pessimistic about Santa, at least he is not pessimistic about a neighbor who somehow managed to get a couple of Shetland Ponies onto his roof on Xmas eve, and who then shared some eggnog and discussed Judith Butler with him even after he knocked her upside the head with a vintage George Brett Louisville Slugger.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Which would you rather believe in?</span></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-81298763032431860102014-12-25T18:59:00.002-08:002014-12-30T14:55:52.130-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus, part 3: Optimo on the 'East Asian Model'<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Optimo:</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-part-3.html">Pessimo's last post</a> suggests that gradualism does not offer a model for development, but instead it is simply a model to manage economic transition. Pessimo also considers the possibility of such gradualism to be useful perhaps as a model for political transition, but then Pessimo dismisses this idea:&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-part-3.html">"Regime liberalization and democratization are themselves rarely the product of developmental projects, they occur spontaneously, out of political and social forces that operate outside the reach of strategic developmental planning."</a><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While development programs often engage with such endeavours, Pessimo seems to be presenting a strong normative stance here: development programs should not engage with this kind of transformation. Optimo will try to respond to both points, in turn.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, while Pessimo is absolutely right in distinguishing a program of economic or political transition from a program to promote development, both can be conceived as programs that try to promote institutional change. Thus, while the end goal may not be the same (i.e. transitioning to a market economy, or promoting democracy may not aim at promoting economic growth), the strategies and tools of one process could potentially be useful to the other. For instance, the dual track strategy to allow state-owned corporations in China to gradually transition from a command economy to a market economy is sometimes used to reform inefficient bureaucracies.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While this point assumes that functional institutions are conducive to economic growth (and therefore institutional reform would be the central goal of a development program), there are scholars who do not subscribe to this hypothesis. Even if Pessimo share such skepticism, Optimo still believes that Pessimo should have reasons to subscribe to gradualism as a model for development. The gradual implementation of policy change seems to be a general principle that is widely accepted among management scholars. Perhaps the most famous and one of the earliest piece supporting this idea is <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/973677?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">"The Science of Muddling Through" by Charles Lindblom, written in 1959.</a> So, even if one is not trying to promote development through institutional change, but would be instead advocating for policy changes, the gradualism should still serve as a guiding principle. In this context, perhaps the East Asian model is the best example of such principle being applied in large scale.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, Pessimo is skeptical of the possibility of promoting any kind of political liberalization intentionally. It is not hard to side with Pessimo if one thinks of George W. Bush trying to bring democracy to the four corners of the world, and invading Iraq under this motto. However, the normative challenge posed by Pessimo is hard to reconcile with the views of one of the most respected thinkers in the development world today, Amartya Sen. In his book <i>Development as Freedom</i>, Sen argues that democratic regimes are conducive to development in a multitude of ways that ultimately enhance human capabilities. One of the most interesting claims developed by Sen in this regard is the idea that democracies avert famines. In other words, democracies avert exactly the kind of individual pain and suffering that Pessimo seems to have identified earlier on as a problem that does deserve our attention and concern, as development scholars. Thus, from a normative standpoint, there seems to be strong reasons to be pursuing political liberalization and promoting democratization in a developmental context. And maybe gradualism may be the way to get there, for the reasons presented earlier.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last but not least, Optimo is hoping (in its endless optimism) that Pessimo has not encountered a drunk with horses in the roof, but has instead had a lovely encounter with Santa Claus and is happily sitting by the tree opening presents at this moment. And since these are not mutually exclusive hypotheses (maybe it was indeed Santa and maybe he was drunk), Optimo hopes that Pessimo has had a chance to share a glass and have a toast with the good old man! </span>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-12243985306380816472014-12-24T00:31:00.000-08:002014-12-24T00:31:34.540-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus, part 3: The 'East Asian Model'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Yet another developmental model that has been drawn from China's experience is what Randall Peerenboom termed the "East Asian Model".&nbsp; The East Asian Model is characterized by a gradualist approach to development, in contrast to the 'big bang' approach that was used to facilitate economic transition in the states of the former Soviet Unions and Eastern Bloc, and by a developmental sequencing that focuses first on economic reforms and only later on political liberalization.&nbsp;<br /><br />Pessimo: <br /><br />The East Asian Model does not actually provide much guidance for promoting development in today's world.&nbsp; China's gradualist approach is an approach to economic <i>transition</i>, not to economic development.&nbsp; Gradualism makes very little sense in the context of development per se:&nbsp; what does gradualism significant in the context of today's India or today's Brazil?&nbsp; What exactly should these countries be 'gradual' about in pursuing economic development?<br /><br />Perhaps the idea is that they should be gradualist about pursuing political reforms.&nbsp; One of the arguments underlying the East Asian Monday is that particularly for the more lesser developed countries, 'development' invariably involves significant social disruption, and its is easier for more authoritarian regimes to weather such disruption than for more liberal, democratic regimes. &nbsp; Whether or not this is actually the case (Pessimo is skeptical) is an open question, but even if it is, it is simply outside the reach of developmental projects.&nbsp; Regime liberalization and democratization are themselves rarely the product of developmental projects, they occur spontaneously, out of political and social forces that operate outside the reach of strategic developmental planning.&nbsp; It is as hard to imaging an international developmental agent strategically halting political liberalization once demand for such liberalization has taken off as it is imagining an international developmental agent promoting effective political liberalization as part of her develomental agenda.&nbsp; Political evolution is something that a developmental agent simply has to live with, it is not something she can effect (and it is probably something she should not try to effect even if she could).<br /><br />I will revisit and expand on these arguments in my concluding comments.&nbsp; For that reason, my response to this variant of the Beijing Consensus is somewhat brief.&nbsp; In addition, some drunk seems to be traipsing around on my roof -- sounds like he somehow even got some horses up there.&nbsp; Luckily, Pessimo is still quite good with a baseball bat . . . .<br /><br /><br /></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-39621286826878348812014-12-22T06:18:00.003-08:002014-12-22T06:32:09.354-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Optimo on the Ends and Means of Experimentalism <i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Optimo:</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the last post, Pessimo provided some illuminating comments about what is often portrayed as an example of experimentalism: land reform in China. Pessimo challenges the widespread idea that there was much experimentation in this process, and I wonder if these have been developed in an academic paper somewhere. If not, they should be!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More important than challenging the concrete example of China as a development model (which is beyond the scope of our debate, as we indicated earlier), Pessimo also raises an important question about whether experimentalism can serve as a model for development. Pessimo's argues that experimentalism cannot bracket the normative issues, which are currently the most pressing issues in the field.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the words of Pessimo:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html"><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Law is a strongly normative phenomenon, and even the most hard-core positivists (like Pessimo) seem to have great difficultly separating the normative from the positive / procedural.&nbsp; Almost all of the law and development projects that I am aware of have ultimately been informed strong normative understandings.&nbsp; I would therefore at least hypothesize that experimentalism distinct difficulty with the normative may be a significantly more problematic feature in the context of law and development than it is in other areas of development.</span></span></i></a>&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I just want to clarify that I am not diminishing the importance of addressing normative issues. The sheer fact that I am proposing experimentalism as model for development has already a normative undertone. The issue is whether we can separate the discussion of ends and means when contemplating a model for development. Pessimo's post seems to suggest that this separation is not feasible (and perhaps not desirable). Optimo, in contrast, is suggesting the opposite.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, let me try to illustrate how such separation would operate with a concrete example. The discussion about Rule of Law (ROL) in development circles has provided us with a myriad of definitions of ROL. Some authors have usefully distinguished between thick and thin definitions of ROL. Thin definitions are primarily procedural, e.g. if rules are applied impartially and equally to all parties involved, one could claim that there is ROL, regardless of the content of these rules. The criticism to thin definitions is that abusive and dictatorial regimes can easily meet these criteria. To address this criticism, thick definitions incorporate not only procedural features, but also substantive ones. Thick definitions are then criticized for searching to something akin to a universal concept of justice, and reducing the possibility of context dependent solutions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While Pessimo seems to be asking for a thick concept of experimentalism -- i.e. a type of experimentalism that would help us define means and ends, or procedure and substance -- I am proposing that we can use a thin one, i.e. a procedural form of experimentalism. Thus, the ends of the experiment would be defined somewhere else, and this process does not need to be an experimental one. In sum, according to this thin concept of experimentalism, once the ends have been defined, an experimental process should be used to try to achieve these ends.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If one adopts the thin concept of experimentalism that I am proposing here as a model for development, it is possible to address two criticisms raised by Pessimo.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, in the context of the Chinese reform, Pessimo says that that fact that the reforms were not new is antithetical to the <i>raison d'etre </i>of experimentalism. I do not think that this is the case. The substance of the reforms does not need to be new. What is required is a <i>spirit </i>of experimentation, i.e. the idea that reforms will be reverted and revised, if they do not work.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, Pessimo claims that the fact that the end of the reform was predetermined (i.e. there would be free market in China) defeats that purpose of experimentation. As I argued here, this is only a problem if one subscribes to a thick concept of experimentation, i.e. means <i>and </i>ends need to be defined through experimentation. According to the thin concept of experimentation, however, the ends can be defined according to other processes, and these may even be political processes. Experimentation comes only as the procedure according to which one will find the means to achieve these ends.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In sum, despite Pessimo's pessimism, Optimo remains optimist that we can use experimentalism as a model for development! &nbsp; </span>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-47715742357234165502014-11-28T00:14:00.003-08:002014-11-29T16:54:16.994-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Pessimo Response to Optimo on Experimentalism <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some responses to Optimo:</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think the problem of identifying ends is much more critical in the context of experiementalism than it is in the context of best practices (e.g., the Washington Consensus), because of the former's critical reliance on ex post evaluation.&nbsp; If we can't agree on the ends, then we really can't do that evaluation, and experimentalism becomes reduces to simple decentralization.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Optimo appears to acknowledges the special difficulties that such normative questions pose for experimentalism, but suggests that that model can still survive.&nbsp; In this, I question whether Optimo underestimates how domineering normative issues are in the context of law and development (as contrasted again, for example, developmental economics).&nbsp; Law is a strongly normative phenomenon, and even the most hard-core positivists (like Pessimo) seem to have great difficultly separating the normative from the positive / procedural.&nbsp; Almost all of the law and development projects that I am aware of have ultimately been informed strong normative understandings.&nbsp; I would therefore at least hypothesize that experimentalism distinct difficulty with the normative may be a significantly more problematic feature in the context of law and development than it is in other areas of development.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But then again, Optimo always has been more optimistic than Pessimo! </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In responding to my skepticism regarding the suitability of experimentalism to national-level law and development projects, Optimo suggests "the beauty of experimentalism is the fact that we may arrive at different solutions through the same process, thus being able to share lessons while at the same time remaining context-dependent."&nbsp; I assume this is related to Pessimo's subsequent discussion of meta-principles (attributing this, as Optimo likes to do, to that fictitious literary alter-ego of hers whom she calls 'Mariana Prado'.)&nbsp; I'm not completely clear how these might work, but I do not see anything occurring in or coming out of China that fits this particular description -- certainly they have not been identified in the experimentalist literature referencing China.&nbsp; Of course, this is ultimately an empirical question, and therefore beyond the terms of our dialogue (which are primarily conceptual).&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But then, Optimo does herself raise this empirical issue when she discusses the work of Chenggang Xu, who-- like many --identify Chinese experimentalism with numerous, spontaneous local rural land reform initiatives that took place in the 1970s.&nbsp; As noted above, this is a commonly heard trope -- but there are a number of major problems with it.&nbsp; First, this wasn't really experimentalism, it was reversion.&nbsp; China had a regime of private agrarian land use rights in the 1950s, these so-called 'experiments' really simply reintroduced that regime.&nbsp; It did not really develop anything new, which seems to be the <i>raison d'etre </i>of experimentalism as a model<i>.&nbsp; </i>Relatedly, one could also argue that these reforms were primarily an expression simply of gradualism rather than experimentalism.&nbsp; There was never any question but that Deng was going to bring to China the 'free' market structure it had enjoyed in the early 1950s and found in most capitalist countries.&nbsp; Again, this is not a question of experimentalism -- there was already much experience with these reforms, there really wasn't that much variation from locale to locale, and they were known commodities.&nbsp; In fact, spiritually, these local experiments had much more in common with the Washington Consensus than they did with experimentalism.<i>&nbsp; </i>Moreover, China's gradualism was ultimately dictated by political concerns rather than developmental concerns, and for this reason too would not seem to represent a <i>developmental </i>model.&nbsp; <i><br /></i></span></span></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-67630163303898866862014-11-16T15:10:00.002-08:002014-11-16T15:10:13.988-08:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- The Beijing Consensus reloaded: Optimo on Experimentalism<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Optimo:</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We turn now to a second version of the argument that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the so-called Beijing Consensus</span> potentially represent a development model that contrasts with the Washington Consensus. This second version is based on the idea that this model is primarily based on experimentalism.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.com.br/2014/11/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-beijing.html">Pessimo's previous post </a>does not address whether there is experimentalism in China or somewhere else. Instead, Pessimo offers a challenge to the idea that experimentalism could potentially serve as a model for development.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pessimo's first argument against experimentalism as a model is the fact that it does not help us deal with the normative questions of development. In other words, experimentalism does not help us define the <i>ends </i>of development<i>. </i>Thus, its utility would be limited to situations in which the <i>ends </i>are already defined, which are often not the major problem that developing countries are confronting, according to Pessimo.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Optimo's first reaction to Pessimo's point is to ask whether it would be even possible to develop a model to define ends. As Pessimo acknowledges, any attempt to define the goals of development and what a society is ultimately aiming at achieving, is highly dependent on the political, cultural and social context. Thus, abandoning the idea that there could or should be a model to define the ends of development may actually be the beginning of a much more promising conversation than the one that the development field has experienced thus far. Indeed, Optimo would argue that the fact that experimentalism seems to have abandoned the intention to define ends, and has focused instead on means, is not only a differentiating feature of this model over the Washington Consensus model, but it may actually be considered a significant upgrade, as development models go. It is a model that is aware of its limits and operates within realistic boundaries.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not to say that the search for a way to define and determine the ends of development is futile and should be abandoned. On the contrary, the entire development enterprise operates under the assumption that there is some search for a common goals of some sort, lest the concept of development becoming so diluted as to encompass "anybody's notion of utopia". But it may as well be the case that the model that will help us search for <i>the ends </i>is not and should not be the same as the one that will help us deal with <i>the means. </i>Thus, Optimo would advance the idea that experimentalism can still survive as a model, despite not helping us with the pressing normative questions that Pessimo correctly highlights in the last post.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second point raised by Optimo is the incompatibility between development in a national legal system and experimentalism: the former would intrinsically involve a top-down process that is antithetical to the central tenants of experimentalism. Optimo also disagrees with the premise of this statement, as it fails to distinguish between form and substance. One could argue that the substance of experimentalism is indeed context dependent, but the form is not. Thus, there is a dimension of the process that remains top-down, which is the formal dimensions -- i.e. what is the process through which actors may find the appropriate means to achieve predefined ends. The beauty of experimentalism is the fact that we may arrive at different solutions through the same process, thus being able to share lessons while at the same time remaining context-dependent.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regarding this last point, there is a recent <a href="http://www.developmentideas.info/chapter/law-and-regulation/">article by Kevin Davis and Mariana Prado </a>suggesting that experimentalism and other recent theories represent a move away from substantive commonalities, towards meta-principles. Since context-dependency prevents a productive conversation about shared lessons and transplanted solutions, the conversation may be more productive moving from the substance of development policies to its form. The idea of meta-principles captures this move. Acknowledging that, law and development theories are now focusing on the procedural and formal aspects of reforms, rather than the content. This is exactly what experimentalism seems to be doing. So, there is still a role for the "development facilitator located internationally", in the words of Pessimo.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regarding the national legal system and its compatibility with experimentalism, Pessimo also argues that national policies would not be possible, because experimentalism is intrinsically connected with decentralization. Optimo thinks that the experimentation and decentralization may go together or not. And to make that point with an specific example from China, it is interesting to take a look at the work of Chenggang Xu from the University of Hong Kong. Xu argues that decentralization and experimentation are different features. While both have been present in China, their combination created a particular type of decentralization that is unique to that country (see the published version <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.49.4.1076">here </a>and a previous draft that can be read for free <a href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/file/Xu_China%27s%20%20Institution_JEL2010.pdf">here</a>).&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are the examples of experimentalism? One example was land reform in the late 1970s, which was initially done at the local level. According to Xu, when the local experimentation "was endorsed by the central government, they were implemented by all levels of government nationwide". Contrary to Pessimo, Optimo does not see any problem in calling this experimentalism. To be sure,</span> Xu indicates that such experimentation was more prominent at the earlier stages of reform, and was significantly reduced as higher levels of economic growth were achieved. Still, the fact that such experimentation took place still suggest that there is something that could be potentially called the Beijing Consensus that would be based on experimentation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In sum, Optimo remains and optimist that Beijing can offer something useful to other developing nations! </span><br />Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-7433316287754939472014-11-06T22:59:00.000-08:002014-11-06T22:59:10.851-08:00 Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- The Beijing Consensus v.2.1: Pessimo on Experimentalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A couple of years after Ramo postulated the notion of a Beijing Consensus, several scholars began advancing another kind of development model deriving, as they saw it, from China's experience.&nbsp; One of these is Dani&nbsp; Rodrik's '<a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/drodrik/Research%20papers/The%20New%20Development%20Economics.pdf" target="_blank">New Development Economics</a>', which -- inspired to considerable extent by </span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sebastian Heilmann's "<a href="http://www.strongwindpress.com/pdfs/tuijian/Sebastian%20Heilmann_Policy%20Experimentation%20in%20China%27s%20Economic%20Rise_2008.pdf" target="_blank">Policy Experimentation in China's Economic Rise</a>" -- "calls for an approach that is explicitly experimental, and which is carried out using the tools of diagnostics and evaluation. . . .The proof of the pudding is in the eating: if something works, it is worth doing." [p.2] &nbsp;</span></span>Does such experimentalism hold meaningful promise as a 'model' for promoting 'development' more generally?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Pessimo</i>:</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">'No, it does not.'</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Following Optimo's advice regarding Ramo's model, we will leave alone the question as to how China's experience actually supports Rodrik's model.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">First off, I want to clarify what I see as the attributes of a 'model'.&nbsp; A 'model' is by its very definition a universal template -- a developmental model is a template for development that can be effectively applied independently from context (unless some prerequisite context is specified in the model itself, which is not the case with 'new experimental economics'). Also, to the extent that 'law and development' models seem ultimately to be devoted to promoting development assistance, a developmental model also needs to provide direction for how such assistance should be constructed.&nbsp; A developmental model that provides no significant guidance to the entity promoting development is not the kind of 'model' that serves the (traditional) 'law and development' agenda.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Following this, I would argue that Rodrik's model does not provide any meaningful guidance for developmental assistance, because it ultimately provide no </span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">universalizable<b> </b>template for developmental assistance -- at least in the area of law and development.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">First, Rodrik’s experimental approach only really works when the developmental ends are agreed upon.&nbsp; New Development Economics is a process by which we can identify different means that better serve some given ends.&nbsp; But for many aspects of law and development, the means are the ends.&nbsp; With regards to China, for example, the issues is often not ‘how best to promote rule of law’, but whether ‘rule of law’ should receive priority over other possibly competing goals – like ‘modernization’ or ‘economic growth’.&nbsp; When the developmental issue is normative rather than practical, New Development Economics does not provide a model for promoting development.<br /><br />Note that with regards to law, this problem can even infect aspects of legal development in which there appears to be consensus as to the developmental end.&nbsp; For example, both the Chinese side and the development organization may agree that China needs to develop stronger ‘judicial independence’.&nbsp; But for the most part judicial independence is as social construct -- it can mean very different things, both in terms of institutional structure and in terms of its contribution to the legal system, to different people.&nbsp; One study suggests, for example, that donors are more likely to conceptualize judicial independence as means for promoting procedural justice, whereas Chinese are more likely to conceptualize judicial independence as a means of promoting substantive justice or factual accuracy in decisionmaking.&nbsp; Again, experimentalism does not provide a model for addressing these kinds of developmental issues.<br /><br />(One might respond that we could still use experimentalism to find ways of reaching and convincing the Chinese that judicial independence is indeed really about procedural justice rather than substantive justice.&nbsp; But that gets us into question of moral imperialism, which Pessimo will leave for another time.)<br /><br />I would suggest that a good many ‘law and development’ issues in China are of this sort.&nbsp; There is in fact much disagreement between China – or at least China’s political leadership – and the law and developmental community as to what goals law and development should be striving to promote.&nbsp; This is true not simply insofar as what following Randall Peerenboom we might call ‘thick’ notions of law and development is concerned, i.e., notions that see developmental as necessarily including promoting human and political rights, and various (liberal) conceptualizations of ‘justice’.&nbsp; But it is also likely to be true with regards to more economically oriented developmental projects.&nbsp; China and ‘the West’ often have significantly different understandings as to the role that market capitalism should play in society.&nbsp; China’s understanding is much more akin to what is sometimes termed ‘economic nationalism’, while ‘the West’s’ understanding is much more politically neutral and cosmopolitan.&nbsp; For this reason, even many economic legal reforms projects – such as reforms to corporate governance of capital markets – are ultimately thwarted by disagreement over ends, not by ignorance with regards to means.&nbsp; Here, too, experimentalism does not help.<br /><br />Another area in which experimentalism seems to have little utility is in that of national legal development.&nbsp; As described by Rodrik, experimentalism is a very contextualized developmental process.&nbsp; A national legal system, by context, is by its very nature a-contextual, it is almost by definition a ‘one-size-fits-all’ phenomenon insofar as the social space of the nation is concerned.&nbsp; Here, a developmental model that focuses on responding to minute nuance of local context again is of little utility.&nbsp; At most, experimentalism would counsel the developmental agent to promote decentralization, local experimentation, and perhaps data gathering.&nbsp; But what would this accomplish?&nbsp; Any local success or local failure could well hinge on contexts that are unique to the locale.&nbsp; For this reason, local successes or failures are unlikely to be able to serve as positive or negative models for elsewhere, even after they have been ‘evaluated’ by central entities.&nbsp; At best, decentralization and experimentalism might promote local legal development, but not national legal development.<br /><br />This suggests that if there is a legal-developmental model in New Development Economics, it is a model that counsels the developmental agency to focus on local legal development rather than national legal development.&nbsp; But there are problems with this as well.&nbsp; One of the major value-added's provided by international legal developmental aid lies precisely in its greater familiarity with more global experiences with law and development.&nbsp; The more localized and locally contextualized problems to be addressed through development, the less a developmental facilitator who is located internationally is able to bring to the table in the form of useable knowledge.&nbsp; 'Legal development' becomes reduced primarily to simply being a source of funds for local projects developed by local actors.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Whether simply being a content-less source of funds this is sufficient to constitution a developmental model is an open question.&nbsp; But whether this is a feasible model of development is another issue.&nbsp; Such a model would be particularly costly to implement.&nbsp; Development of local legal institutions costs about the same as development of national legal institutions.&nbsp; But they benefit far, far fewer people.&nbsp; Costs would be even further increased by the experimental nature of the development project, because it would involve funders paying for a lot of failures in addition to the occasional localized success.&nbsp; Given its extremely high cost-to-benefits ratio, it seem very unlikely that many funders would embrace such a model.</span></span></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-50160670679156581032014-10-26T20:35:00.001-07:002014-10-27T07:13:11.888-07:00Brazil's elections: a choice of development models<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A short break in the debate about the Beijing Consensus for some breaking news: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, Brazil decided to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/brazil-re-elects-dilma-rousseff-president">re-elect its President</a>, keeping Dilma Rousseff for another 4 years in power. The margin of victory was really small (51.6%). The wealthy regions (south and southeast) have largely favoured Dilma's opponent, Aecio Neves, while the poorest regions (north and northeast) have strongly supported Dilma. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the elections clearly show a divided country, those who have followed the debates and scrutinized the policy proposals know that the results reflect more than <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29760736">a division based on income levels.</a> The outcome of this election shows a country divided over two very different development projects.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before the Worker's Party (PT) came to power with Lula in 2002, the country was ruled by the Social Democrats for eight years. During this time, the Social Democrats (PSDB) created a much needed stabilization plan to fight inflation (which had reached 1,000% annually in the early 1990s). However, they also adopted a plan to reduce the size of the state through privatization, while at the same time creating strong institutions that could support private investments (such as independent regulatory agencies). According to the social democrats, fiscal responsibility, small state and strong institutions would create the conditions for the private sector to act as engine of growth. In sum, from 1998 to 2002 Brazil has followed an economic agenda very much in tune with the Washington Consensus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2002, the Worker's Party came to power with the intention to keep the strong pillars that secured macroeconomic stability. However, the party also came with a plan to increase redistribution and reduce poverty. The results achieved were so impressive that the ambitious anti-poverty program implemented in Brazil was <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/03/22/mundo-sin-pobreza-leccion-brasil-mundo-bolsa-familia">touted by the World Bank</a> as a model to be followed by other countries. Alongside its redistributive programs, the Worker's party has also strengthened and increased the state's presence in the economy. This has been accompanied by <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/06/02/guest-post-bndes-and-brazilian-development/">an increased role for the Brazilian development bank</a>, and a number of informal institutional changes that have undermined the institutional make-up of the previous model. The i<a href="http://www.arabnews.com/columns/news/648061">ndependence of the Central Bank</a> is a<a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/brazils-central-bank-becomes-an-unlikely-star-in-presidential-campaign-1410817522"> topic that gained a surprising and unexpected prominence during the campaign</a>. Along the same lines, the independence of regulatory agencies for infrastructure sectors has also been a concern, but this one has been confined <a href="http://www.bpsr.org.br/index.php/bpsr/article/viewFile/125/116">to a more specialized audience.</a>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The candidates also had opposing views on foreign policy, which were also in line with their views of domestic policies. As one blogger described: "</span><a href="http://www.equaltimes.org/brazil-a-nation-at-a-crossroads#.VE2oouevzz4"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rousseff’s vision is clearly represented by the BRICS model, which constitutes a multipolar challenge by the some of the world’s biggest economies to the hegemony of the United States.</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">" In contrast, according to The Economist: </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21627700-why-outcome-neck-and-neck-election-matters-neighbourhood-brazil-and-its-backyard">Mr Neves would seek closer ties with developed countries (a main source of technology and markets for Brazil’s manufactures) without abandoning Asia or Africa. In South America, he’d “de-ideologise” policy, rather than team up with Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba.</a>" In sum, not only on the economic policy the candidates were not seeing eye to eye, but their differences in the domestic sphere echoed into their thoughts about how Brazil was supposed to relate to the rest of the world. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brazilian citizens were utterly divided between these two options and for a good reason. The proposals presented to Brazilians during this electoral process are not only very different but represent models of development grounded on irreconcilable premises. On the one hand, liberal (and neoliberal) economists have developed strong arguments on the importance of institutions and the private sector to promote development (combined with free trade and foreign direct investment). This is the model supported by the Social Democrats. On the other hand, there are those who support greater state intervention and a higher degree of protectionism. Such policies have strong roots in Latin America, dating back to the creation of the <a href="http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/35026">ECLAC, which was based on structuralist thinking</a>. Today, such views are articulated and strongly supported by prominent scholars, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang">Ha-Joon Chang</a>. The influence of this school of thought over the Worker's Party agenda is undeniable.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, Brazilians today were asked to choose between two radically different development models. Considering that this topic has generated fierce debates among development experts for decades, it does not come as a surprise that Brazilians were also divided over the choices. There is no conclusive empirical evidence supporting one model or another. As Brazilian voters had very little information to determine where each of these models would take them, they turned to the past in search for guidance. By and large, the poor have chosen the development model that has mostly favoured them in the last 12 years. The wealthy, in turn, have favored the model that promised higher rates of growth, which is what has benefited them most in the past. While the results may be a victory for lower classes and for those concerned with poverty and inequality, they have not reduced the country's anxieties about its future. The redistributive and interventionist model won in the ballots today, but only time will shows if this was indeed the right path for the country in the long term. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-46433901669010727422014-10-01T22:37:00.003-07:002014-10-01T23:04:43.728-07:00No São Paulo Consensus or Happiness for Pessimo<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">&nbsp;Pessimo brought a measure of well-being to suggest that São Paulo would be probably be a good place to be. I suggest instead that we adopt a development-related concept, which is the World Happiness Index. As Michael Trebilcock and Mariana Mota Prado describe in their new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Advanced-Introduction-Development-Michael-Trebilcock/dp/178347338X">Advanced Introduction to Law and Development</a>: </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 104%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 9.2pt; margin-right: 5.95pt; margin-top: .05pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">"A movement to redefine development based on well-being supported the development of the Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index. Spearheaded by the King of Bhutan, <a href="http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/articles/">the index includes nine domains</a>: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. These domains are considered conditions of a ‘good life’ and are measured by 33 indicators.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5010064188473055814#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><sup><sup></sup></sup></a></span></span></span><style>@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoFootnoteText, li.MsoFootnoteText, div.MsoFootnoteText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }span.MsoFootnoteReference { vertical-align: super; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 5.95pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }span.BodyTextChar { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.FootnoteTextChar { }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">"</fo</style><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> While initially supported only by a few academics and the government of Bhutan, the concept has gained international attention recently. In 2011, the United Nations approved a resolution entitled <a href="http://undesadspd.org/Home/tabid/40/news/317/Default.aspx">"Happiness: Towards a Holistic Approach to Development"</a>.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5010064188473055814#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a> (...) This resolution was followed by two World Happiness Reports, published in <a href="http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2960">2012</a> and <a href="http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/world-happiness-report-2013/">2013</a>, which measure the overall happiness in different countries and rank them against each other. Alongside its recognition at the UN, in 2013 <a href="http://www.oecd.org/statistics/guidelines-on-measuring-subjective-well-being.htm.">the OECD issued guidelines </a>for an international standard for the measurement of well-being, largely subscribing to the concerns that have driven to the creation of the happiness index."</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 104%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 9.2pt; margin-right: 5.95pt; margin-top: .05pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 10.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 104%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 9.2pt; margin-right: 5.95pt; margin-top: .05pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5010064188473055814#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, how happy was Optimo in Brazil? Not very happy. According to the 2013 report, Brazil ranks 24th. This is not the worse place to be, but it is still not at the top of the ranking as Pessimo suggested in his previous post. It is certainly a better place to be than Singapore (30th), but not better than Canada (6th). Therefore, we would not be on solid grounds to propose a São Paulo consensus on this basis. Moreover, we need to consider that </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Germany was two positions in the ranking below Brazil in 2013. This may have changed since the World Cup.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If we focus the analysis in São Paulo, the city is going through <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/unprecedented-drought-puts-sao-paulo-water-supply-at-risk/article20798270/">one of the worse droughts in its history, which is threating water supply</a>. While this may be a temporary problem, the <a href="http://www.scienceforbrazil.com/sao-paulo-sick-megacity/">UN indicated that São Paulo is the city with the highest level of mental disorders</a> associated with urbanization among 23 cities analyzed. So, let me assure Pessimo that levels of well being are not particularly high down there.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Considering the Index, and the fact that Optimo is now (happily!) back to higher levels of happiness Canada, I am looking forward to continuing the conversation about the Beijing Consensus.</span></span></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"></div><br /><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Post scriptum</i>: Would Portugal have been able to produce the most melancholic music in the World (fado) if they were not occupying the last position in the ranking? &nbsp; </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span><br /><div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;"></div></div>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-64098567850327852792014-09-21T21:16:00.001-07:002014-10-11T19:31:00.775-07:00Optimo in Sao Paulo -- another shot at a Sao Paulo consensus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><i>Pessimo</i>:<br /><br />Optimo and I are taking a break from our Beijing Consensus dialogue because Optimo decided to go to Sao Paulo.<br /><br />As you may recall, I've been trying to find a meaningful Sao Paulo Consensus, but so far have been 'disappointed' (as I like to be).&nbsp; Brazil does not do particularly well in my PAW index; its HDI/IHDI differential is negative.&nbsp; It is, in this sense, perfect for Pessimo's pessimistic view of 'development'.&nbsp; So, one wonders, why would someone named Optimo seek out such a disappointing place?<br /><br />Because, as it turns out, Brazil is an incredibly optimistic place!&nbsp; According to the most recent&nbsp; <a data-uotrack="storyinlinelink" href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/128186/gallup-healthways-index-work.aspx" target="_blank" title="http://www.gallup.com/poll/128186/gallup-healthways-index-work.aspx">Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index</a>, Brazilians ranked tied for <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/16/global-well-being-poll-panama/15679637/" target="_blank">5th (!) in the world in feeling of subjective well being</a>.&nbsp; No wonder Optimo would want to go there!&nbsp; Despite all their developmental disappointments, Brazil nevertheless seems to be relatively full of people who ultimately see the world the way that Optimo sees it.<br /><br />And maybe, that's the best consensus we could ultimately hope to find.&nbsp; After all (and with apologies to Groucho Marx), Pessimo would never consent to a consensus to which he would actually consent.</div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-88845844761541243342014-09-17T19:31:00.002-07:002014-09-17T19:31:24.554-07:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Pessimo response regarding Ramo's Third theorem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I don't think that Optimo and I are in much disagreement regarding Ramo's 3rd theorem.&nbsp; First, to clearify, I don't think that Ramo meant "self-determination' to refer to post-colonial status (since China per se was never a colony -- although parts of it were (e.g., Manchuria, Qingdao, Shanghai and of course Hong Kong).&nbsp; My own understanding is like that of Optimo -- that by self-determination, Ramo is referring to autonomy with regards to policymaking, and I suspect even more particularly with regards to monatary policy, since Beijing's refusal to float the RMB is probably the most well known and oft-referred to example of Beijing's autonomy from global (American) economic orthodoxy.<br /><br />Optimo is also probably right in suggesting that I placed too much weight on economic size in setting out a country's capacity to achieve policy self-determination.&nbsp; However, I do think that is the case with regards to China.&nbsp; Contrary to Rodrik's suggestion, Japan and South Korea are not good counter-examples, both developed their economies well before the onset of the Washington Consensus hegemony in the mid 1990s, and both were given economic carte-blanc by the US during the 1950s through 1980s primarily due to their front-line status during the Cold War.&nbsp; I remember hearing a Washington DC policymaker or think-tank type saying during the early 1990s that Washington had "learned its lesson" from Japan, and "would not make the same mistake again", meaning that Washington was not about to let other government -- I recall he was referring specifically to Taiwan and the Mainland -- get away with the disregard for the global neoliberalism, particularly insofar as trade and IPR were concerned.&nbsp; How autonomous India's economic policymaking is is an open question, India's efforts to defend its economic policies with regards to compulsory licensing of medicines has met with limited success, and according to some appear likely to fail in the long run (see, e.g., Christopher Arup, “The Transfer of Pharmaceutical Patent Laws: The Case of India’s Paragraph 3(d),” in Law and Development and the Global Discourses of Legal Transfers (John Gillespie and Pip Nicholson, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 121-142).&nbsp; More recently, it's ability to set policy with regards to foreign investment has been dealt a significant blow when a ruling by an international investment effectively required Indian law to give foreign investors greater protections than they give their own domestic firms (see the <a href="http://www.iisd.org/itn/2012/04/13/the-white-industries-arbitration-implications-for-indias-investment-treaty-program/" target="_blank">White Industries v India case</a>).<br /><br />But that having been said, there are indeed examples of smaller economies that have resisted transnational neoliberal hegemony.&nbsp; The best example of this is probably found in Malaysia's decision to impose capital controls on its currency, against the strong opposition of both the IMF and Wall Street, during the Asian Economic Crisis of the late 1990s.<br /><br />But at the end of the day, Optimo gets me right when he or she suggested:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Pessimo raises an important question about what defines a model, arguing that it needs to provide guidance for action. If this is the case, Pessimo may have the same reservations to the third theorem that he has regarding the second theorem, i.e. the theorem does not seem to present any guidance to action. Indeed, if anything, the theorem seems to say “do what you think is best”. I would claim instead that it says "do not listen to the World Bank and the IMF", which can be interpreted as a negative guidance for action. If Pessimo wants positive guidance, this may fall a bit short. But I will leave this for Pessimo to confirm (or not) and then I may come back to this in a future post. </span></div></blockquote>Yes, I do think that ultimately, that is my position. &nbsp; And it lead us directly to the second version of the Beijing Consensus as outlined in the prologue, the 'experimentalist' version set out independently by <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199226122.do" target="_blank">Randy Peerenboom in his book on the 'East Asian Model'</a> and <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/drodrik/Research%20papers/The%20New%20Development%20Economics.pdf" target="_blank">Dani Rodrik in his article on 'new development economics'</a>.&nbsp; It is to this I now propose we turn.<br /> </div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-28788655122680978762014-09-14T20:43:00.000-07:002014-09-17T21:56:07.450-07:00More on the proposed PAW ('Punching above [GDP] Weight') index: On the relationship between HDI, IHDI, and PAW <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In a commentary response to my earlier posting on the possible utility of an index comparing GDP to HDI ranking, which I called the PAW ('Punches above its Weight') index, Mariana Prado suggested that the PAW index might be improved if one were to use inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) rather than raw HDI:</span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">&nbsp;The HDI includes a measure of wealth (until recently they used GDP per capita, and now they use GNI per capita). As a consequence, the rank of a particular country in the HDI may reflect a high level of income, and relatively low levels of education and health. Therefore, my suggestion is to calculate the PAW as the difference between a country's rank in GDP (or GNI) per capita) minus its rank the HDI health and education indexes. If this is too complicated, perhaps an easy improvement would be to use inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) instead. The advantage of IHDI is that it reflects more accurately the percentage of the population that is actually benefiting from the existing levels of income, health and education in the country.</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Actually, exploring the relationship between IHDI, HDI, and PAW revealed something very interesting:&nbsp; namely, that the relationship between a country’s IHDI and HDI rankings seems to correlate </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">significantly </span></span> with that country's PAW index.&nbsp; In other words, the greater the positive difference between a country’s IHDI and HDI rankings, the more likely that country will also have a high PAW (i.e., high positive difference between its HDI and GDP rankings).&nbsp; Below are the top 15 countries listed in order of difference between IHDI rankings and HDI rankings (IHDI/HDI), followed by their PAW.</span></span><br /><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <br /><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 303px;"> <tbody><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;"> <td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u>Country</u></div></td> <td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u>IHDI/HDI</u></div></td> <td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u>PAW</u></div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Moldova</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">18</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">22</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Uzbekistan</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">17</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">19</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Kyrgyzstan</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">17</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">21</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mongolia</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">15</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">18</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Ukraine</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">14</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">34</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Vietnam</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">14</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">13</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 21.8pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Armenia</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">13</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">31</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Azerbaijan</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">11</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">11</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Belarus</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">10</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">11</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 10;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Czech Republic</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">9</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">11</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 11;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Serbia</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">9</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">9</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 12;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Sri Lanka</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">9</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">39</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 13;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Gabon</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">8</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">-60</b></div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 14;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Indonesia</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">8</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">17</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 15;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tajikistan</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">8</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">17</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 20.65pt; mso-yfti-irow: 16;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Jordan</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">5</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 20.65pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">43</div></td> </tr><tr style="height: 21.8pt; mso-yfti-irow: 17; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Georgia</span></div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">2</div></td> <td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 21.8pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">30</div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-SG</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="&#45;-"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true" DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="267"> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/> 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mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt:solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} </style><![endif]--><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This leads me to suspect that what IHDI is adding to HDI may be similar to what PAW is adding to GDP.&nbsp; This makes sense, conceptually.&nbsp; The lower HDI conditions of the poorer and more impoverished part of a country's population are the low-hanging fruit of HDI development:&nbsp; the relatively low level of HDI resources available to this population means that it is likely to be the easiest and most cost effective part of the HDI spectrum to improve.&nbsp; </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All in all, it suggests that the way that a country punches above its GDP weight is by effecting a progressive (re)distribution of HDI resources to poorer populations.&nbsp; </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are a number of significant implications stemming from this.&nbsp; First, the PAW index probably should not use iHDI rather than HDI, because that would lead to double counting -- if PAW is ultimately measuring inequality in HDI resource distribution, and IHDI is also measuring inequality in resource distribution, than using IHDI rather than HDI in calculating PAW would be counting resource inequality twice.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Second, it would seem to confirm my hypothesis that insofar as development is concerned, strategic institutional design -- aka 'law and development' -- should properly focus on issues of resource (re)distribution and not on growth, as that is the part of the HDI basket that is most likely to be susceptible to institutional architecture.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This leads to a third implication, which has significant and very ambiguous implication for the law and development project.&nbsp; Because it is unclear to my mind how much legal-institution reform can actually effectuate progressive redistribution of HDI resources.&nbsp; I will address this in a separate post.</span></span></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-70674660850593402622014-09-13T06:28:00.000-07:002014-09-13T10:31:24.914-07:00Engelmann on International Capital and Legal Space in Brazil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><span dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">Fabiano Engelmann has just circulated an important article in Portuguese on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8303060/ADVOCACIA_E_CAPITAL_INTERNACIONAL">International Capital and Legal Space in Brazil </a>"O Espaco Juridico Brasileira e as Condicoes de Uso do Capital Internacional" <br /><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">Engelmann follows Dezalay and Garth in his analysis of the impact of Rule of Law reforms in Brazil and the impact of global legal ideas on Brazil's "juridical space". He describes how FGV has played a role in building up the role of "corporate lawyer" and USP has spearheaded diffusion of Law and Economics.<br /><br />He charts the rise of elite corporate law firms that present themselves as representatives of foreign corporations and which, due&nbsp;to their "<i>size, insertion in the world of business, and lawyering methods distance themselves from traditional lawyer's offices and operate like large corporations</i>" (my translation). The paper includes data on the 10 largest elite firms including areas of specialization and examples of cases handled as well as data on&nbsp;the history&nbsp;of the firm, size, and international connections of&nbsp;principal partners.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">Engelmann observes:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "This sketch&nbsp;of a&nbsp;preliminary map&nbsp;of the&nbsp;space&nbsp;for legitimation&nbsp;of&nbsp;"corporate lawyers"&nbsp; in the academic and professional spheres, along with the construction of legal institutions with affinity to the market, allows us to affirm that this sector grew significantly since 1995. We can point to the initiatives of FGV and the law and economic movement as evidence of the import of techniques of corporate lawyering and the embedding of legal institutions supportive of business practice." (my translation).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">While the corporate law sector and the norms it favors have had significant impact on juridical space, there are counter tendencies and resistances. The paper describes a number of intellectual and advocacy movements largely based on interpretation of the 1988 Constitution that tend to affirm more state-centric approaches and resist market norms. He mentions judicial decisions and post-graduate courses in law both which have&nbsp;reinforced public law doctrines and collective rights. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"The combination of judicial decisions and intellectual production in the academic field has strengthened the recognition of collective rights and buttressed public policies aimed at reducing inequality in contrast with efforts to use judicial space to guaranty individual rights, contract and property" (my translation).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;">The article ends by suggesting that the future will see a continued struggle between efforts to legitimate a market legal culture based on&nbsp;models exported by&nbsp;the World Bank and&nbsp; favorable to international business on the one hand, and alternatives visions supported by interpreters of the Constitutions largely positioned in careers in the State.</div></div>David Trubekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17232285901544864848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-68953968238806257822014-09-12T21:00:00.003-07:002014-09-12T21:05:18.359-07:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Optimo on Ramo's idea of a 'Beijing Consensus' (Third theorem)<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; mso-themecolor:hyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">As promised, I now turn to the third theorem of Ramo, which is the following:</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Finally, the Beijing Consensus contains a theory of self-determination, one that stresses using leverage to move big, hegemonic powers that may be tempted to tread on your toes. This new security doctrine is important enough that I treat it later in a separate chapter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Pessimo had <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html">two reactions to this theorem</a>. First, Pessimo seems to agree that self-determination is relevant but disagrees with Ramo’s assumption that such condition can be influenced by domestic policies. In other words, while Ramo perceives this a power struggle, Pessimo is more determinist: <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html">“China’s autonomy was and is pure and simply a function of its size”</a>. Second, Pessimo argues that while Ramo is concerned with the “hegemonic powers”, markets and the private actors operating in them offer a bigger threat to a country’s self-determination. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I am guessing that the first reaction of Pessimo comes from his determinist view of development. Indeed, the idea that China’s self-determination comes from its size seems even more drastically deterministic than Pessimo’s argument that a country’s physical and cultural proximity to other countries determines its development’s prospects. As you may remember, Pessimo offered a series of clarifications to my first post, including the following: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-on-ramos.html">Without belaboring the basis for and parameters of this particular determinism, I would argue that the economic development of both Taiwan and South Korea is due simply by their close geographical and cultural proximity to Japan, together with a perhaps even closer cultural proximity to the United States that emerged during and owing to the Cold War.&nbsp; It was and is these various dimensions of proximity that catalyze the unique ability of their industrial parks to promote cutting-edge agglomeration.&nbsp; But another way, I argue that is development that enables institutions (including Asian industrial parks), not the other way around.<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"></span></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Let me preface everything that I will say by indicating that there are very vague terms both in Ramo and in Pessimo’s formulations. Thus, part of my response is based on some speculation about what these terms actually mean. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Let’s assume that a good measure of self-determination is the fact that a country has not been colonized, which lends itself to a series of important consequences, such complexes and often largely domineering post-colonial relationship (with the actual colonizer of with its replacement). China has never been colonized, along with a few other nations: Liberia, Japan, Thailand, Bhutan and Iran. Just by looking at the list of countries, it would be hard to claim that countries are not colonized because of their sizes. Thus, a more complex set of facts needs to be used to explain this. Let’s assume that by size, Pessimo is referring to population and self-determination is still referring to not being colonized. It is true that China has never been a colony, but other countries with similarly large populations, such as India, have been colonized. Perhaps Pessimo is referring to territory, not population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In this case, there are at least two other countries of comparable territorial size that were colonies: Brazil and Canada (although the colonial territory expanded overtime as opposed to being set out at the outset). In sum, these definitions seem too easily questionable for me to believe that this is what we are talking about. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Let’s assume instead that by self-determination we referring to a country’s ability to determine its domestic policies independently of the influence of other nations. Again, the size of a country seems to be of much less important than its political and economic power and, perhaps most importantly, the governance structure of international institutions. Indeed, the tension between having an international world order and maintaining a country’s ability to define its own domestic policies is beautifully explored in Dani Rodrik’s book the Globalization Paradox. As one review of the book suggests, if there are any lessons that come from Asian countries, including China, is that they have kept their ability to decide their own domestic policies in the face of the Washington Consensus formulas:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“As Rodrik sees it, globalization began to run off the rails when it got hijacked by the notion that any restrictions on the flow of goods or capital across borders would result in great sacrifice to efficiency and economic growth. Not only was this free-market ideology imposed by the United States on developing countries through the interventions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but it was also imposed on the United States itself through a succession of free-trade treaties, the deregulation of finance and the retreat from any semblance of industrial policy.</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The irony, Rodrik notes, is that the countries that experienced the greatest growth during the heyday of the "Washington consensus" were Japan, China, South Korea and India, which never embraced it. For years, they had nurtured, protected and subsidized key industries before subjecting them to foreign competition. They had closely controlled the allocation of capital and the flow of capital across their borders. And they flagrantly manipulated their currency and maintained formal and informal barriers to imports. Does anyone, he asks, really think that these countries would be better off today if they had played the game, instead, by the Washington rules?”</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">(For the entire review, see <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031106730.html">here</a>). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">In other words, China and other Asian countries do provide a model of self-determination in light of the attempts, such as those influenced by the Washington Consensus, to imposed one single policy (a free market policy) to all countries. The high level of self-determination of these Asian countries has protected them both from the so-called “hegemonic powers” and their pressure in favour of free markets. Incidentally this self-determination also seems to have protected them from “the markets”, which is Pessimo’s second concern. If this is the correct interpretation of what Ramo mean by self-determination, it is very clear from the list of countries listed in above (Japan, China, South Korea and India) that size does not matter. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Pessimo may have still reservations regarding this point. In <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/09/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html">an excellent response</a> to my comments to the second theorem, Pessimo raises an important question about what defines a model, arguing that it needs to provide guidance for action. If this is the case, Pessimo may have the same reservations to the third theorem that he has regarding the second theorem, i.e. the theorem does not seem to present any guidance to action. Indeed, if anything, the theorem seems to say “do what you think is best”. I would claim instead that it says "do not listen to the World Bank and the IMF", which can be interpreted as a negative guidance for action. If Pessimo wants positive guidance, this may fall a bit short. But I will leave this for Pessimo to confirm (or not) and then I may come back to this in a future post. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Let’s turn to Pessimo’s second point: “the much bigger problem is domination by market”. Pessimo not only argues that markets can offer a bigger threat than hegemonic powers, but he also argues that the solutions available are rather limited:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html">“The only effective response to this problem that we have found to date is for developing nations to enter into transnational regional financial arrangements like the Chiang Mai Initiative in Asia or the Prado-inspired BRICS Development Bank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But at best, this only results in a regional autonomy, not in the kind of domestic financial autonomy that Ramo is imagining.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Moreover, they only insulate from large shocks, they do not insulate from the kind of persistent market-driven domination by private actors – as articulated, for example, in threats to relocate production, harassing litigation and lobbying, and intellectual domination of the WTO and other international financial institutions and organizations – that is a much greater threat to economic autonomy than ‘hegemonic powers’.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></span></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;">My first comment is that Prado would be a much more influential scholar if the BRICS Bank had been inspired by some of her ideas, but unfortunately that is not the case. Second, Pessimo here suggests that self-determination would be restricted to “domestic financial autonomy”. As I have argued earlier, I would rather define self-determination as the country’s ability to set up its own policies. The idea of financial autonomy seems a bit vague, not to say utopian. Does domestic financial autonomy means having enough resources in the national economy not to need foreign direct investment or foreign investment of any kind? This seems like a rather tall order. To make matters more complicated, towards the end Pessimo changes the term to “economic autonomy”, which makes the statement even more confusing.What is economic autonomy?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;">In any event, I think the excerpt cited earlier provides a good illustration of the fact that Asian countries, including China, have managed to protect themselves from such intrusive market forces (and the vulnerability associated with them) by creating protective policies. If this kind of limited vulnerability is what defines "financial or economic autonomy", we are back to my earlier point. such autonomy is derived from a country’s ability to determine its own policies (insulating itself from “markets” as much as it deems appropriate). So, we are back into the idea that self-determination is connected with a country’s capacity to define its own policies. And size (however defined) does not seem to have anything to do with it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;">In sum, as they say: “It's not the <i>size</i> of the dog in the fight, it's the <i>size</i>of the fight in the dog.” </span></div>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-10236160705296019452014-09-10T22:58:00.000-07:002014-09-12T18:06:00.419-07:00Dialogus Interlude -- Why not a Kiev Consensus? Introducing the 'Punches Above its Weight' (PAW) Index.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Some of us argue that a country’s capacity to develop GDP per capita is significantly capped by transnational factors that operate outside of the reach of domestic governance institutions.&nbsp; Like I wrote earlier, I believe that China’s dramatic economic growth can be more-or-less wholly explained by the common-sense removal of a set of highly dysfunctional economic and social policies, combined with China’s close economic and cultural proximity to the world’s most dramatically developing regional geography, that of East and Southeast Asia.&nbsp; In other words, I would argue China’s domestic economic growth has been driven primarily by the dynamic growth of the larger regional economy of east and southeast Asia of which China is a part, and not by anything special that China has been doing domestically.&nbsp;&nbsp; Even after some 20 years of searching, no-one has been able to attribute Chinese dramatic economic growth to the presence of any particular domestic institution.<br /><br />This being the case, it seems misfounded to hold China up as a model simply because of its level or growth of GDP / cpaita.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is likely to simply be a function of China's fortuitous location in transnational economic space.&nbsp; <br /><br />On the other hand, however, it does seem more likely that institutions, including legal institutions, might be able to impact other aspects of development – such as literacy, nutrition, economic stability and security, health, etc.&nbsp; These non-economic aspect of development are relatively well captured by UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI).&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.sg/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-optimo-on_29.html" target="_blank">But as Optimo has noted</a>, a country’s HDI is also significantly affected by its GDP level.&nbsp; This suggest that in looking for an institutional ‘model’ for development, we need to look at a country’s HDI performance independent of GDI, since that is where that country’s domestic institutions – including legal institutions – are likely to be having impact.&nbsp; <br /><br />Along these lines, in looking for possible developmental models, I proposed we might start by looking at what I am calling the PAW ('Punches Above its Weight') Index.&nbsp; The PAW index measures the difference between a country’s GDP per capita ranking and its HDI ranking – i.e., how much a country’s level of development punches above its GDP weight.&nbsp; In this way, it looks to measure how well a country has been able to transcend the natural developmental boundaries set by its level of GDP.&nbsp; The more a country has been able to transcend those boundaries, the more likely it is that we might find institutional models that deserve study.&nbsp; (Consistent with this, PAW ranking do not seem to show the same kind of core-periphery geographical patterning that GDP and HDI rankings do.)<br /><br />Seen in this light, China – aka the Beijing Consensus – does not appear to offer a promising site for a developmental 'model'.&nbsp; China ranks 93rd in GDP per capita and 91st in HDI, giving it a PAW index of +2.&nbsp; (Country rankings come from Wikipedia -- so sue me.)&nbsp; Of the other BRICS countries, Russia has a PAW index of +1, but at a much higher overall level of development (58/57).&nbsp; I had originally hoped that Brazil would give us a more promising model, but unfortunately, its PAW index is 0 (79/79), so there goes my earlier hope for a <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.sg/2014/09/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html" target="_blank">São Paulo Consensus</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp; India has a PAW index of -2 (133/135), and South Africa has a PAW index of -34 (84/118).<br /><br />So, where should we look?&nbsp; The best PAW index in the world belongs to Jordon of all places, which has a whopping +43 (120/77).&nbsp; Perhaps just as surprising, Georgia is second with +40 (119/79).&nbsp; Sri Lanka (112/73) is third with +39.&nbsp; But I would still suspect that these are not promising locales for models, as they all feature relatively small economies and small population densities (and in the case of Sri Lanka, an island economy).&nbsp; <br /><br />Of the more typical countries,&nbsp; that which suggests the most promising site for a developmental model would be the Ukraine, which ranks 107th in GDP / capita and 83rd in HDI, giving it a PAW index of +24.&nbsp; Perhaps even more promisingly, the Ukraine does not feature the geographical attributes associated with superior economic performance:&nbsp; unlike China, it is neither culturally nor geographically (transportationally) proximate to core regions of economic development; and it is relatively landlocked.&nbsp; So there, it is indeed more likely to be institutions that are doing the heavy developmental lifting.&nbsp; Therefore, instead of exploring for a Beijing Consensus (or even a São Paulo Consensus), what we really should be exploring is a Kiev Consensus.&nbsp; <br /><br />Some other interesting observations:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Of the developed countries, that with the highest PAW is New Zealand at +23 (30/7).</li><li>Many African countries have quite good PAW ratings (PAW indexes of +10 or more), perhaps reflecting the difficulties that <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w18490.pdf" target="_blank">GDP measures have in capturing the actual economic performance in that region</a>.</li><li>Although landlocked countries generally do poorly with regards to GDP (as shown in the work of Jeffrey Sachs and others), they seem to do surprising well with regards to PAW.&nbsp; In addition to Georgia, high PAW landlocked (or at least <i>relatively</i> landlocked) countries include Armenia at +31 (118/87); Kyrgystan at +21 (146-125); Uzbekistan at +19 (135//116); and Nepal at +18 (167/145).&nbsp; As noted above, given limited navigational and trade utility of the Black Sea, one might argue that even the Ukraine is a relatively landlocked country, at least functionally.</li><li>Botswana, which was frequently hailed as a developmental paradigm in the early 2000s, has a PAW of -47 (62/109).</li><li>On the other hand, some seemingly dysfunctional political systems exhibit surprising strong PAW performance, including Libya at +27 (82/55); Zimbabwe at +16 (182/156); and Burma at +11 (161/150).</li></ul></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-82045744291393089732014-09-08T21:47:00.004-07:002014-09-08T21:49:40.040-07:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Pessimo Clarification and Response to Optimo re: Ramo's Second Theorem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><i>Pessimo</i>:<br /><br />Optimo was right to question my circularity argument.&nbsp; That was not a strong thesis, and it detracted from my argument.&nbsp; Optimo is also correct to note that the mere fact that mainland China has not actually conformed to the Beijing consensus does not by itself refute the power of that so-called 'consensus' as a developmental model (like I noted earlier, it probably would have been more effectively presented if it had been termed the 'Taipei Consensus').&nbsp; However, I would assert that the fact that China has not conformed is significant in that it suggests that we actually have real evidence that the 'Consensus' actually works as a developmental model.<br /><br />The principle focus of my critique is indeed with regards to the sustainability of the second theorem, and consistent with Optimo's observation, by sustainability I mean policy sustainability.&nbsp; Simply put, I would argue that developing countries do not have the wealth necessary to sustain the kinds of regulatory technologies that Ramo advances in the first theorem.&nbsp; And this makes the Beijing Consensus unsustainable as a developmental model.<br /><br />And while I do indeed agree with Ramo's focus on quality of life rather than simply on GDP, I don't believe that that by itself a model makes.&nbsp; As I will elaborate more later, to me a model is more than just an abstract goal, it is a guide to action.&nbsp; I don't see anything in this second theorem that suggest a guide to action.&nbsp; Chaos management, crisis management, and sociology at best simply address some of the problems of development, but they are ancillary to the ultimate project of development.&nbsp; Ramo's second theorem is like Gertrude Stein's Oakland -- there is no 'there' there.<br /><br />Finally, in response to Optimo's query to me:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">China seems to be a great example of a country in which millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and have had their lives improved in the last decades. If nothing else, we could perhaps say that at the very least the country has effectively adopt strategies to reduce "the brutality of material poverty", to use Pessimo's expression. So, if we do not want to ask China to behave like a developed countries before becoming one, isn’t this enough to show that they have some sort of promising strategy in place?&nbsp;</span></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;Yes, China has lifted millions of people out of poverty.&nbsp; But that by itself does not necessarily make it a 'great example'.'.&nbsp; One could argue that China's developmental strategy, at least to date, has consisted simply of a gradualist removal of a set of failed command-and-control and isolationists policies that had drastically suppressed China's wealth generation for over a generation -- policies that we have already long known to be dysfunctional.&nbsp; In other words, the real lesson of China's growth might ultimately be trivial -- command economies don't work and it is good to have your economy open to international trade.&nbsp; There may be a good lesson in all this insofar as North Korea is concerned, but its not really of much relevance to the rest of the developing world.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">In other words, China's is simply the success of simple common sense, its is not that of some great advance in developmental thinking.&nbsp; </span>Along these lines, one might also note that despite its rapid development, China's level of development (measured either by GDP standards or HDI standards) is still only generally the same as that of Indonesia and the Philippines, and is significantly less than that of Vietnam or Brazil.&nbsp; So here is my question to Optimo: Given that Brazil has even significantly less poverty per capita than China, shouldn't we be exploring instead for a</span><i> </i>São Paulo<span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> Consensus?&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">N.B.&nbsp; Actually, we will be -- in November.</span></div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-30888436557640261362014-09-05T16:05:00.000-07:002014-09-05T16:08:41.736-07:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Optimo on Ramo's idea of a 'Beijing Consensus' (Second theorem)<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; mso-themecolor:hyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Now that Pessimo and I have engaged a far bit on the first theorem, it is time to do what I have been promising to do for two weeks: present some comments on the second theorem. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">It is has been a while since Pessimo presented Ramo’s ideas, so here is a memory refresher:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">The second Beijing Consensus theorem is that since chaos is impossible to control from the top you need a whole set of new tools. It looks beyond measures like per-capita GDP and focuses instead of quality-of-life, the only way to manage the massive contradictions of Chinese development. This second theorem demands a development model where sustainability and equality become first considerations, not luxuries. Because Chinese society is an unstable stew of hope, ambition, fear, misinformation and politics only this kind of chaos-theory can provide meaningful organization. China’s new approach to development stresses chaos management. This is one reason why academic disciplines like sociology and crisis management are the vogue of party think tanks at the moment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Pessimo has criticized Ramo for presenting a circular argument regarding the first theorem (<a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo_31.html">see here</a>) and he criticizes Ramo for doing this again regarding the second theorem. Pessimo believes that Ramo is basically arguing that to develop you need to be developed. Or, as he writes: <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-pessimo.html">“the problem here is that sustainability and equality both required highly sophisticated regulatory systems whose costs are such that they generally cannot be supported by anything less than an advanced industrial economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>These include not simply advanced technologies for regulating and responding to environmental degradation without interrupting the productive activity of the polluting industry, which China does not have, but highly evolved banking systems, auditing systems, and socially pervasive accounting practices to that can effectively collect and redistribute wealth through an efficient the taxation system, which China also does not have.”</a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I do not share Pessimo's reservations regarding this second theorem, for three reasons: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">First, whether China has achieved the development objectives stated by the model does not strike me as particularly relevant. At the end of the day, what we are looking for is whether the model holds some internal coherence, is grounded on some form of credible knowledge (theoretical or empirical), and can be implemented. So, looking at China and saying it has not achieved the goals prescribed by the model is similar to dismissing the Washington Consensus by saying that the United States does not have the touted free market economy advocated by the model. The concrete experience of one country does not invalidate the model. Indeed, as Ramo himself acknowledge in the paper, China should not be considered an example: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">“China's market dynamism has brought all sorts of problems. On the macro level these problems include pollution, social instability, corruption, mistrust of the government and unemployment. On a personal level, all but the youngest Chinese find themselves at least somewhat disoriented by the rapid change in their lives (...) In the last 25 years, China's</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> economy has moved from one of the most equitable in the world in terms of income distribution to one of the most inequitable (p. 24)”</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">So, the question is not whether China is indeed successfully following this model or not. The question is whether the model can provide guidance for action for developing countries.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Pessimo will argue that the model cannot possibly provide guidance to other countries because there is a circularity in the argument.</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> Pessimo says: to achieve the goals set up by this model, a country needs to be developed already. Unlike Pessimo, I do not see a circularity problem here. The theorem only seems to require countries to focus on achieving these goals. Thus, I interpret the paragraph as an aspirational statement. It invites developing countries to focus on other goals, rather than focusing exclusively on economic growth. Whether and how these countries will succeed in achieving sustainability and equality is a different question entirely. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Second, Pessimo seems to read too much into the words sustainability and equality. I am not fully sure if they refer to environmental sustainability. They may be referring to policy sustainability, i.e. the capacity to maintain in place the policy decisions taken at a certain point in time. Similarly, Pessimo seems to assume that equality refers to income or wealth equality, when it may be an expression that refers to something entirely different, such as not intentionally producing significant winners and losers out of reforms. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I am not sure if this is what Ramo meant by the words sustainable and equitable, so this is entirely speculative on my part. But if we were to interpret his use of the these words in the way I propose, I think the dual track reforms implemented during the Chinese transition from a centralized economy to a market economy perfectly exemplify the concerns with sustainability (of the reform) and equality (in the gains that were produced by the transition). For a full explanation and analysis see <a href="http://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/stanec/99010.html">here</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Third, Pessimo seems to zoom in on the idea of managing chaos, while ignoring the fact that Ramo is inviting countries to adopt a plurality of objectives. This seems like a healthy shift in development thinking (and seems especially refreshing if contrasted with the economically centered discourse of the Washington Consensus).&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">Indeed, </span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">in his clarification to some of the comments I had offered earlier, Pessimo stated that: “<a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-on-ramos.html">there are other ways of conceptualizing ‘development’ -- such as Sen’s development as freedom, or improvements in general quality of life, or simply development as alleviation of the brutality of material poverty (my preference).&nbsp; When conceptualized in this terms, I am much less a determinist – probably no more so than most people.</a>” This seems to be in line with Ramo’s opening statement about focusing on quality of life instead of GDP. </span>This takes us back to the discussion about the concept of development that should be embedded in a model for development, which is something that both <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-on-ramos.html">Pessimo</a>and <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.ca/2014/08/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-optimo-on_29.html">I have</a> commented on earlier and we seem to be somewhat in agreement regarding this point. Therefore, it take me by surprise that Pessimo has not simply embraced Ramo's invitation to focus on "quality of life", instead of GDP.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">In sum, for the three reasons present above, I do no share Pessimo’s reservations regarding the second theorem.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;</span></span>Let me finish with a question for Pessimo. China seems to be a great example of a country in which millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and have had their lives improved in the last decades. If nothing else, we could perhaps say that at the very least the country has effectively adopt strategies to reduce "the brutality of material poverty", to use Pessimo's expression. So, if we do not want to ask China to behave like a developed countries before becoming one, isn’t this enough to show that they have some sort of promising strategy in place? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Mariana Mota Pradohttps://plus.google.com/116403069306018113786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010064188473055814.post-45745835630508878222014-08-31T17:49:00.001-07:002014-09-05T19:43:58.545-07:00Dialogus de Beijing Consensus -- Pessimo: One final thought about Ramo's first theorem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><i>Pessimo</i>:<br /><br />So I'm watching the sunrise this morning, worrying about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp9MPLEAqA" target="_blank">which gender I should choose </a>(and knowing that whichever I choose, it will certainly be the wrong one), when it finally 'dawned' on me (get it?) what it is about Ramo's first 'theorem' that makes it so problematic for me.&nbsp; To recap, that theorem says that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: left;">"Rather than the “old-physics” argument that developing countries must start development with trailing-edge technology (copper wires), it insists that on the necessity of bleeding-edge innovation (fiber optic) to create change that moves faster than the problems change creates."</div></blockquote>The problem with this, of course, is that the ability to deploy cutting-edge technology (like fiber optics) is a key indicia of development.&nbsp; What Ramo ultimately seems to be saying is 'the key to development is to be developed.'&nbsp; It's a circular argument.<br /><br />I raise this point because I will argue that we are going to see exactly this kind of circular argument again when we look at the East Asian Model and New Development Economics.&nbsp; And I'm beginning to wonder if such arguments might be a too common theme in the development agenda -- a theme that started off with 'the key to development is to act like you're developed' (see, e.g., Ramo, New Institutional Economics, the World Bank's <i>Doing Business Reports</i>), and when that didn't work, has since morphed into 'the key to development is to do whatever helps you to become developed.'&nbsp; This latter tautology is often framed in metaphorical terms of 'experimentation'.&nbsp; But as we shall see, at least in the case of China, this is a hollow metaphor:&nbsp; As I shall argue a bit later, China has never engaged in anything that an meaningfully be called 'experimentation': its 'experimentation' is better analogized to a 'random walk'.&nbsp;&nbsp; But a random-walk theory of development doesn't leave much for a developmental 'theory' to do.&nbsp; Hence, the resort to circular arguments -- they are useful for making something that is not really a theory look like a theory.<br /><br />* * * <br /><br />Post script:&nbsp; Following <a href="http://lawdevelopment.blogspot.sg/2014/09/dialogus-de-beijing-consensus-optimo-on.html" target="_blank">Optimo's response</a>, I now realize that this is not nearly as strong or as global a critique as I thought it was.&nbsp; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&amp;v=V3FnpaWQJO0&amp;gl=SG" target="_blank">Never mind</a>.</div>Michael W. Dowdlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17485076053391288065noreply@blogger.com0